Five Poems by Annie Freud
After Louise Labé (c. 1522–1566)
VI
When, subtle soul, you take your leave of me,
I see how every living thing must fall.
I am the body, you, the better part.
O beloved, where have you gone?
Don’t leave me swooning here forever
or I fear that I may lose my mind.
Alas! Don’t make me suffer so,
I want my due, the half of your esteem.
Dear friend, see to it that no danger
threatens our encounter, our great second chance,
and may it have no taint of judgement,
no stern rebuke, but with sweet grace,
gently vouchsafe to me your gift of beauty,
once so cruel, now with your goodwill.
VII
I live, I die; I burn and flounder.
I am consumed with fever, stiff with cold.
My life is much too easy, and too hard,
a warp and weft of misery and joy.
I burst out laughing for no reason, and I sob,
and in excess of pleasure, endure much grief.
My good has drained away; it never lasts.
I dry my eyes again and spread my leaves.
For this is where love inconstantly has led me,
my pain seeming always to increase –
then, without a word, I find release.
Assured that bliss is mine tonight,
the longed-for hour, now suddenly at hand,
I trudge back home at shame’s command.
VIII
As soon as I lie down in my soft bed
to take the rest that I so sorely need,
my errant spirit takes its leave,
wastes itself without restraint.
While I still hope that this soft breast
can hold you – moaned for, sighed for –
with me for ever and a day –
The tears I’ve shed in such travail!
But O sweet sleep, and sleeping on my own,
the bed all mine, the long tranquillity –
send me the dream I always have,
and if my poor besotted soul does not
enjoy a kind of happiness that’s true,
at least let me have it as a lie.
XII
O that I, laid waste by pleasure,
in afterglow on that broad breast –
I know we’ll never live together;
I can’t help hoping for the best.
And if, one night, holding me against him,
complacent that no storm or scandal
could ever interfere in our affair,
would he say, Dearest, let’s keep on as we are?
And if one night, him lying in my arms,
wrapped as the ivy wraps the sturdy oak,
death came stalking, envious of my bliss –
then aroused at last he’d fuck me –
so my soul would hurry to his lips,
so would I die, far better than I live.
XIII
As long as I have tears to mourn
the hour we just spent together –
If my voice could triumph over
sobs and sighs to reach your ear –
As long as I can strum a common love song
on my small guitar, sing of your charms –
so does my mind content itself to brood
forever only on your person.
I have no thought of dying,
but when I fear my eyes are growing dim,
my voice grown hoarse, my hand, weak,
my soul, unable to compose the look of love
would, in this mortal passage,
beseech death: Come now! Eclipse my day.
Annie Freud is a poet, translator, teacher, editor, and painter. Her first collection The Best Man That Ever Was (Picador, 2007) received a Poetry Book Society recommendation and was awarded the Dimplex Prize for New Writing. The Mirabelles (Picador, 2010), was a Poetry Book Society Choice and was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. Her third collection was The Remains (Picador, 2015), which also received an award from the Poetry Book Society. Hiddensee, published in January 2021 by Picador, is her fourth collection.