Alexander Saccasan is a Mediterranean-Australian born and raised in Melbourne, where he remains. He studied Archaeology and Literature at Monash University.
Instagram: night.of.fire_
O let me kiss thy lip one-thousand times,
Then prithee kiss me sweet ten-hundred more,
I shalt thee recompense eight-hundred rhymes,
Then thou shalt to our sum add eighty-score.
And as our tally wanes innumerate,
And we at length its contents sweet confuse;
We’ll start again, and careful calculate,
And not th’arithmetic of love abuse.
O let no priest, nor saint, nor book’s command,
With jealousy of youth, sweet beauty’s spring,
To chill thee with some hollow reprimand,
And sour the note attun’d to thy heartstring.
For though the day proceedeth out the night;
Eternal sleep succeedeth our brief light.
© Translation by Alexander Saccasan
Petrarch I
O thou, who hears, within my trembling verse,
The thousand sighs which fed upon my heart;
In errant youthful days when I was worse,
Than that man who forlorn before thee art.
For all the ways in which I weep and speak,
Between vain hopes and vainer suffering,
From thee, who knows love by its trials, I seek,
To find thee piteous and forgiving.
But I do see that I’ve become the talk,
So long a time, of people far and wide,
I know now vanity’s fruit by the stalk;
For its succour with shame doth me fair chide.
Repent I now, and all the world doth seem,
With all its joys, as though nought but a dream.
© Translation by Alexander Saccasan
Published with the permission of Alexander Saccasan