An Epistle, Teaching Love
Bálint Balassi could have written to Sir Philip Sidney)
My lovely brother,
you were sent by the Creator
to the world in the same year,
like me. you began to try life
a good month after me.
I was a curly-haired,
brown boyster,
while you – in the typical
English style –
flower-faced (until your face
became ruined by the small-pox!)
and your hair reddish.
I have not too much right
to write all about this
things of intimacy,
but our almost twin-fate
(mortal wound of Zutphen
and of Esztergom!)
is much more strong,
than the demands of courtly behaviour:
let me be straightforward:
why wasn’t lashing you
a stronger desire,
ttan your cold
Astrophil-longing?
My dear Philip,
the half of Europe
was writing weaker
and stronger poems
upon your death,
while just a handful
of laments on mine.
But some fresh
lettuce-leaves,
and some sweet
strawberries of late May
was always good enough
for me to sing
the very essence of desire
into the viscers of my readers.
Shortly: if it could be possible,
here, on our emerald meadows,
by me, some lectures could have
been waiting for you,
(and around us plenty
of ladies to help!)
to teach you for
the real notes of Venus,
which was melting
the bones of dead and living ones.
Manolis Aligizakis 