in the closed vale

The following is an epistola metrica composed in English in imitation of and playfully attributed to Francesco Petrarca. The appended sonnet is however genuine and translated from the Italian.)

“Petrarch here deliberately gives the impression that he is writing from Vaucluse soon after his brother Gherardo, the presumed addressee of the epistle, has joined the Carthusian order in 1343, perhaps in the winter of 1343-44. But at this time Petrarch was in Naples and then Parma. Parma is vividly mentioned in the poem, but other internal evidence strongly suggests that the letter is of later date, after 1348 at least. If the letter was written at Vaucluse, it would probably date from the period of his residence from 1351-53, after he had begun but not finished collecting his Familiarum rerum libri. It is possible that Petrarch composed this letter, among others, with the intention of inserting it at a specific point in the chronology of collected letters and that it was not intended for Gherardo's eyes at all. The letter, however, is stylistically inferior to much of Petrarch's work, and he must have realized this, for it was never included in his finished work, and has only recently come to light, quite by accident. The original is in Latin, with a sonnet appended in Italian.”

 

i n  t h e  c l o s e d  v a l e,

                                                my sweet brother,

the swallows are doing their silent work without complaint.
They are like you; wherever they are the people

are made happier, and everything becomes

much cleaner, as after April rains. It was

April, you know, when you chose to leave me here,

and all your friends, and the long nights
of talking of glorious ancients, and of the fathers
of sad spurned faith, and poor neglected Rome.
Even so was it April when my heart,
as you know, left me for another, never

to return while I have life, so that every laurel

and every breeze might mock my emptiness,

and my soul hung like a green leaf before

the breath of crowds; my reputation
was their toy and their laughter
blew me about upon the branch till I,
brown and sere, fell upon the stream

and drifted here, deep in the shadows
of my own closed vale, my sweet brother,
that is so like me, for its hidden spring weeps
in winter and in summer, without end.
But you have been a comfort to me;
whether here, nesting like a swallow in the cliff
above the east bank of the green and tumbling stream;
or far below, in the dusty-throated Babylon

on the plain: a counter to the madness

and corruption of that place, and a
complement of cheerful sufficiency in the other,
always helpful in my crazed efforts to placate
the nymphs of the vale, while honoring the muses

that always make them jealous, so that

every meadow, every garden we built there

was swept away within the year; their fury

undiminished till complete; their victory leaving no sign

of all that I -- that we had striven to plant
or build to beautify our memories of that place.
And just as our gardens were swept away
by the jealous nymphs, I feel you too
have been stolen -- by a jealous God. Please,

my sweet brother, bear with me, for I feel
swollen with sorrows, but I mean no blasphemy!
Does not the Father of Heaven himself say,
"I am a jealous God"? and he takes away the best,

always, because the best is right for him

to take. And I know that it is God

that has taken you, and not some gang of monks

whose heaven is an inn, and whose God

is carried within the circle of their belts!

Rather, I know it is God because only the Father

inspires the life of the silent men, whom you

have been inspired to join with, not a rabble

of cenobitic share-alls, grubbing each

at the other's blanket under a common roof,

breathing garlic in one another's ears

the whole night long, and begging

for new wine or chasing women all the day, making

the name of Christ a joke to the common people,
so that when these beggars go out for alms,
a man may say to them, "What! You here again?"
and call some poor fellow from the ditch
and give the alms to him instead, saying
"Here! In Mohammed's name, for he truly
is stronger than the Christ these fellows talk of!"
But your order, an eremetic city set
on a hill, is cleanly, faithful, quiet, and strong
in the kindly works of our Lord. They and you
are so alike, how could it have been otherwise?
Thus do I say, a jealous God took you,
for he could not bear this filthy world should hold
such a one another day. All
my friends are like you in this; the Lord
loves them all too well; he takes them, one by one;
Remember Parma? It was there, you know,
by the bench I told you I'd had built,
that I, one day, was weeding among the bulbs,
near enough to the little brook to hear
its crystal song above the deeper roar
of the famous city so close by, and a darkness
came and stood upon that bridge, and I
looked up and into that darkness, as I have done
so often at the mouth of the fountain here
(for I am not afraid of caves and darkness,
and love to walk at night, even when
there is no moon), and saw therein
our friend, Giacomo Colonna, striding across

where that branch of the plane tree dips so closely
to the pool, between the bench and wall.

I greeted him, surprised, and most concerned,

for he was hurrying along, and had no company,
and seemed as if he would not -- could not -- tarry.
He smiled, yet would not be embraced,

and said (I will never forget his words then!),
"Don't you recall the awful storms along
the baleful crest of the high Pyrenees?

You hated them; so did I, and now

I am leaving those places forever: I am for Rome."

I wanted to go with him, but he was

so stern it made me afraid to speak; it was clear

that he would not have me go, so I looked

closely on him, to fix his beloved features

forever in my mind, and it was then

that I saw how pale he was, and knew that he

was dead. I have said elsewhere that this was in a dream,

but already I am not so sure.
Colonna died that very day, you know;

So I feel I really saw him. But you I never

see now, asleep or awake, but only remember.

Even as I write, I remember, and it seems
as though I might shape you with my words.

I see you as you were when we braved the craggy slopes
so high above this shady valley, when we were young.

You took the straight path as it lay before you,
up and over all obstacles, and never stopped

till you had reached the appointed goal. You were then

just as you are; that is why God loves you

best! While I, wandering this way and that,

sought to take a path that looked the easiest,
but found to my chagrin it turned downhill.
I was lucky to reach the top at all,

but I did! I did! You cannot deny it, brother.
And it was I who brought our precious saint,
Augustinus, with us all that way.
The clouds were lower down, with the late sun
bright on their broad fleecy backs, and the Alps
shone so far to the south, between us

and our father-country Italia, and the sea.
At our feet, so near it seemed a dream,

the Rhone, gleaming, in its bed of stones.

All this was first yours, but also mine,

and I brought forth Augustinus from my breast
and gave his benediction to that day:
that men wander through the world
gazing upon the high mountain tops, the great
ocean waves and deeply springing rivers,
and the slow-turning canopy of bright stars,
yet never think to look upon their souls.
This you have done; but this, I fear, I fear
to do, or rather wish to do but always turn

just as I reach the heavenly door, to seek

some easier-seeming path, some flowered way,
and always find, as on that peak, my way
leading down, toward some darkened place.
God be my witness, I often try to turn
there on my pleasant-seeming path, back

to the place where last I saw the door, but it

by then is gone, and nothing there I find

but a smooth expanse of bramble-covered wall.

And now you write to me and say the things

I have so often told myself, troubled,

as you must believe, beyond the common run

of men in sin! Brother, I have even

made a small book wherein I keep

my lapses and little successes;

already once I kept myself safe for two years

and seven months; now, it is true, the priest

to whom I go for confession is kept busy,

but I trust the Lord will give me strength.

In living alone, as you know by now, there is

much to be gained. I have here the two
faithful servants and the dog, and visitors

come, but not too often, and the people

of the valley seem to regard me as their judge,

but I do have, as you have seen for yourself,

a space to myself within the walls of my

small house, south windowed, and endowed

with one extravagant-seeming thing: a good scriptorium.
Nearby are the books, my closest friends:

they (Virgil, Cicero, Livy, and the rest,

and Augustinus, my advisor and true confessor)
open continually their great treasures to me,
and through me, to all the world beside.
Do you not rise and pray in the midst of night
that all the saints may bless the wide world?
And the scripture says, "the heartfelt prayer
of a righteous man effecteth much." So too
you pour out the treasures of heaven on earth,
as I unearth and bring to light the gold
and silver of the past! Brother,
my work is not so unlike yours...except,
of course, that I am able to put my name on all
my little productions! I do admit,
to you, now, dear heart, that I desire
greatly to see my name remembered -- God forgive this!
I see two thirsts in me: the one
to live forever in a name above
the common herd; the other, to nurse along
the hurt that blind boy gave me, years ago
when I was least prepared to defend myself.
Yes, I am still thirsting! Only those
who have never seen her cannot understand!
The light foliage of her hair, the dark contrasting
brows...the all-destroying twin suns
burning in her face, that should
have killed me long since, but Fortune
preserved me, for they have been oft averted;

while my own eyes looked everywhere that she,

I knew, was not, and found her in stones and winds
and even among the roots of trees along

the storm-scoured banks of the river Sorgue.

I have sat upon the grass at midnight

and rained tears on my own breast,

because the stars, so like her in their shining,
wheeled by beyond my reach, as thoughtless
of my suffering as she! And it seems

to me now these two thirsts are one

in some way: that as the light-limbed goddess
vanished, and in her place stood rooted forever
the dreamless, unapproachable laurel tree,
Apollo might have lifted a storm-stolen branch
with which to weave himself a crown
for remembrance; so with me, for to console

myself that tears and smiles, and even my poems,

moved not one, though they move all others,

I might, somewhere along the Appian Way,

pluck some branch of the very tree of hate and,

weaving it round my brows, make it forever after

my crown of love. The Africa
will earn me this, though it is already mine,
but I have begun, my brother, to gather
the scattered leaves the winds of Love
have brought me here and elsewhere --
if it must be pain, then let the pain be famed!
Famed in France and Italy, and even

as far as the shores walked by Scipio, or

the mountains beyond the sacred land

where Christ walked along the Galilean strand.

Is this dreaming? Perhaps I have dreamed it all;

some will say: "this man invents everything he says

has happened to him"; but, brother, you know

I speak to you truly from the heart,

this heart that is not mine but another's,

for you yourself once loved truly one

who now has gone beyond you and the grave.

What is life? They, the crowd, never

ask, but I have asked, all my days,

and now I tell you what even the ancients most

desired to know, yet never found: this life

of man is a kind of dreaming, whether awake

or sleeping. He rises in a dream, and dresses
with dreaming hands. In the field he dreams
of grain, and at his nets he catches silver dreams.
He looks but cannot see, and hears but nothing
hears, as our blessed Lord tells us; there is nothing
between a man and a man but words,
and our words are all, and only, stuff of dreams.
I make myself in books, brother, because I want
my dreams to go on living yet,
and I know no other way. Is this so evil?
I will tell you more when I come, dear brother,
for I desire much to see you, and
observe the true monastic rule, some days
or even weeks, if the Abbott will allow.
I close by appending a copy of the first

leaf that drifted from my pain, back

to my door here in the wild, so that I might
weave it in the crown that now I wear

here in the closed vale, where it is always
winter in my soul without you, dear brother.


t h e  s o n n e t

Apollo! if yet lives the beautiful desire

that set you aflame by the Thessalian coast,

and if your love for those blonde tresses

amid wheeling years, has not found oblivion
through slow ice and sharp, wicked time
enduring while your face yet seems obscured,
protect this loved and sacred foliage

by which first you and then I were caught;

and by the virtue of that hope of love

that kept you up despite your life of pain,
completely clear the air of all falsehood;

we may then both see a wonder in the same way:
seated, our lady, upon the grass

making, with her arms, her own shade.