255. ‘La sera desïare, odiar l’aurora’

Desire the evening, and hate the dawn:

that’s what calm and happy lovers do:

evening for me is doubly grief and tears,

the morning is for me the happier hour:

when sometimes we see them in one moment,

the one sun and the other like two Orients,

so alike in beauty and in radiance

even that heaven is in love with earth,

as it was once when the boughs were green

that have rooted so in my heart, always,

so that I love another more than myself.

This is what two contrary hours achieve:

what calms me gives me reason to desire it:

and what brings me pain to fear and hate it.