Torture me, cruel goddess: use your full strength Stratiami a possa tua crudel fortuna
Torture me, cruel goddess: use your full strength,
play as many games with me as you like,
enjoy this cruel delusionary torment:
busy yourself night and day, gather pain

just for me. Deprive me, allow me no
respite, never find my grief too tenacious
make me ever battle and never know peace
all the ills you possess, center in me,

because while I live you will not alter
my firm heart or thought which kills me countless times a day and then brings me back

I'm not afraid of your pitiless fierce blow
because pain so intense precludes my feeling
this sorrow -- why it is as nothing.

Straziami a possa tua crudel fortuna
E di me gioco fa quanto a te piace,
Godi del strazio mio crudo e fallace,
E giorno e notte in me martiri aduna,

Fa pur ch'io stenti, e che mai tregua alcuna
Non trovi al mio dolor troppo tenace,
Dammi pur sempre guerra e non mai pace,
Et quanti mali hai teco in me raduna;

Che forza non arai, mentre ch'io vivo,
Muovere il fermo cor da quel pensiero
Che mille volte il dì l'uccide, e avviva,

Né temo il colpo tuo spietato e fiero
Che la cagione, onde il mio mal deriva
Tal è ch'ogni gran duol tengo leggiero.

Sources:

Costa 9:29; 1995 Bullock 29:88. For Key see A Note on the Italian texts

Comments:

I place this with the other poems Costa situates in the era of Gambara's life before she married Giberto because of the hectic feel (at once slightly mechanical and bitten off), strained mood, and clumsiness. The seventh line does not rhyme. Her reference to Fortune having continually played games with her may not be evidence of years of anguish, but rather a younger passionate woman's perspective. Bullock considers this is a poem to be one written after the death of Giberto; Gambara cannot forget him. See 1995 Bullock p. 88n.
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