Trinity Journal of Literary Translation
Michelangelo 94 Born merciful for others and merciless with itself,
a brute so base, pathetic and so sad
it gloves its skin around another’s hand is only worth its birth in death.
I wish it could have been my fate to dress
my hide around the body of that lord, my man— like a snake that moults its skin against a slab I’d alter my condition through my death.
If only that O so lucky pelt were mine
that binds around so beautiful a breast with the plaited furs of itself, his robe –
I’d have him through the day – or, at his base, if I
could be his slippers, at the very least
I’d carry him two winters through the snow.
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