“I was the door that opened once upon great triumphs,
famous for Tarpeian virtue. Gilded chariots
were often at my threshold, which was wet with
the beseeching tears of captives. But now I have scars
to complain of from drunks’ night-brawls,
I am always being hammered by unworthy hands,
I am never free of tacky garlands hanging off me,
and torches lie about, the mark that someone’s been
excluded. Nor can I ward off scandalous attacks on
the mistress, noble, but now a butt of vile lampoons
(nor is she deterred by concern for her good name,
from a lifestyle worse than usual even nowadays).
All night I must tolerate a boring, whingeing
suitor, the worse for long nights spent outside.
He never allows my doorposts any rest, bangs out the
same old serenade, wheedling and loud: ‘Door,
are you crueller even than your mistress? Why else
say nothing to me, here on this hard, hard doorstep?
Why, unmoved and unresponsive to my discreet prayer,
do you never unbolt and let in my love?
Is no end to be given to my pain, must I bed down
as warmly as I can on the doorstep? The midnight hours
and stars, the wind cold with the nip of dawn
are agony, lying here: only you,
impervious to human pain, never respond in kind
on your silent hinges. If only my whisper could
get through a hollow crack to strike
my lady’s little ears! Even if she’s impervious as
Sicilian rock, harder than iron or steel,
she still won’t be able to control her eyes,
her emotions will rise up and find their outlet
in reluctant tears! Now she reclines in the happy arms
of another man, while what I say
is gone with the wind of the night. But you, o door,
the main, the only cause of my misery, are never
won over by the presents I bring.
I have not wronged you, spat out any insult,
such as are said in bitter jest, that should make you
condemn me to spend ages in the street, hoarse with long
complaining. I’ve often brought you poems in the latest
rhyme, lain flat, pressed fervent kisses on your steps.
How many times, betrayer, have I come back to your posts
and with furtive hands fulfilled the promises I’d made!’
This I must put up with, and whatever else you sad lovers
have thought up, while he makes
the dawn birds’ life a misery. Now, between
my lady’s antics and his endless vapouring,
I get no rest at all from their ill-will.”