Sonnet, Dear lady, Mrs. Segoviana Bridge
Dear lady, Mrs. Segoviana Bridge,
whose eyes are now reduced to weeping sand,
if you cry for the river, you're in luck,
though for a widow you're quite elegant.
It died of bladder blockage. In Castille
no washerwoman will not cry in grief;
your busy pleasure island's now condemned
to black elms cloaked within a mourning sheath.
It's very true that all the doctors say
that it's not dead, that in the summertime
the heat can make you faint, or sweat, or shiver;
and that when cold December comes again,
these learnèd men will make sure that their mules'
life-giving drops give health back to the river.
Translated by Alix Ingber
(1609)
