"The world won't wait on the politics of indecision"

[larryhammer]

Some finger exercises are more worth sharing than others. Petrarch's Rime Sparse 1, rendered from Robert Durling's prose pony glossed with a gross misapplication of Spanish:

From you who hear in scattered rhymes the sound
Of all those sighs with which I fed my heart
Throughout the course of my first youthful wound,
Back when I was another man in part --

Because of the way I, stylish and witty,
Wept of my vain sorrows and vain hopes,
From those who understand, knowing love's ropes,
I hope not only pardon, but your pity.

But now, when I think of how for this long time
I have been held by many in esteem,
I often hang my head ashamedly:

Shame is the fruit of all my raving rhymes,
And repentance, too, for now I clearly see
That what pleases the world is a brief dream.

Not bad for a half-hour's work. Though with source material like that, it's hard to go wrong. *glances at the sonnetteering tradition* Well, too wrong.

---L.