Trinity Journal of Literary Translation
Online: Michelangelo 161 What razored file, o ailing soul,
so harrows down your failing skin— frail, exhausted, sculpted thin?
When, freed by time, will you arise
To heaven where you were so happy and so fair before— This mortal veiling cast aside?
For even though I change my hide, in these few years that I have left, my oldest habit cannot change—
it weighs me downward by the day and drives me all the more. Love, from you, I will not hide
That I grow envious of the dead. Confused, I quake
beside my trembling fearful soul. O in my final hours, Lord,
make me please you. Stretch your merciful arms to me and, from myself, please set me free.
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