The Old Lady's Lament For Her Youth
The Old Lady's Lament For Her Youth
by Francois Villon
I think I heard the belle
we called the Armouress
lamenting her lost youth;
this was her whore's language:
"Oh treacherous, fierce old age,
you've gnawed me with your tooth,
yet if I end this mess
and die, I go to hell.
"You've stolen the great power
my beauty had on squire,
clerk, monk and general;
once there was no man born
who wouldn't give up all
(whatever his desire)
to have me for an hour--
this body beggars scorn!
"Once I broke the crown's laws,
and fled priests with a curse,
because I kept a boy,
and taught him what I knew--
alas, I only threw
myself away, because
I wanted to enjoy
this pimp, who loved my purse.
"I loved him when he hid
money, or used to bring
home whores and smash my teeth--
Oh when I lay beneath,
I forgave everything--
my tongue stuck to his tongue!
Tell me what good I did?
What's left? Disease and dung.
"He's dead these thirty years,
and I love on, grow old,
and think of that good time,
what was, what I've become;
sometimes, when I behold
my naked flesh, so numb,
dry, poor and small with time,
I cannot stop my tears.
"Where's my large Norman brow,
arched lashes, yellow hair,
and wide-eyed looks I used
to trap the cleverest men?
Where is my clear, soft skin,
neither too brown or fair,
my pointed ears, my bruised
red lips? I want to know.
"Where's the long neck I bent
swanlike, when asking pardon?
My small breasts, and the lips
of my vagina that sat
inside a little garden
and overlooked my hips,
plump, firm and so well set
for love's great tournament?
"Now wrinkled cheeks, and thin
wild lashes; nests of red
string fill the eyes that used
to look and laugh men dead.
How nature has abused
me. Wrinkles plough across
the brow, the lips are skin,
my ears hang down like moss.
"This is how beauty dies:
humped shoulders, barrenness
of mind; I've lost my hips,
vagina, and my lips.
My breasts? They're a retreat!
Short breath-how I repeat
my silly list! My thighs
are blotched like sausages.
"This is how we discuss
ourselves, and nurse desire
here as we gab about
the past, boneless as wool
dolls by a greenwood fire--
soon lit, and soon put out.
Once I was beautiful...
That's how it goes with us."
Translated from the French by
Robert Lowell
|
Poetry
|