94. ‘Quando giugne per gli occhi al cor profondo’

When through my eyes the image of my lady

enters my heart’s depths, she banishes all others,

and the power my spirit radiates

leaves my limbs, leaves them inert weights.

And often a second miracle is born

from the first: what was driven away,

fleeing from itself, arrives in a place

where it takes vengeance and delights in exile.

So a deathly pallor appears in two faces,

since the vigour that showed them as living,

is no longer where it used to be in either.

And I recalled this on the day I saw

two lovers undergo that transformation,

and look as pale as I used to look.

Note: ‘in a place’: in her heart.