an endnote and love song:
SAUNA 89 (sweated by В. Шекспір)
1. And if you were to leave me for my faults
2. I'd not defend my lameness, walking halt
3. and from my trust I would elide your
4. name, I would not do you wrong and speak of you
5. and (love) I'd not look at our friends who say you do
6. not merit me Your name was sweet and is no more
7. I will not speak of you
8. nor will I walk again where we once walked
9. I will not let my tongue evoke your name.
10. Your name will not be named by me, lest I profane
11. I will not name you.12. I will not speak (too much profane)
13. You gone, I could not love me more than you
14. and if you love me not at all I love me even less
15. But oh your name. It will not touch my mouth.
I will not ( trout ) name you.
Copyright © 2013 by Erín Moure. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-A-Day on August 16, 2013. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive.
"The poem was an imitation of William Shakespeare's Sonnet 89 for Sharmila Cohen's and Paul Legault's wonderful The Sonnets: Translating and Rewriting Shakespeare, though I did not submit this version. This sonnet now ends Kapusta (or Cabbage), a sequel to The Unmemntioable. The lyric address woven like a thread of water across The Unmemntioable ("dearest trout") appears here in a ghostly way. To repeat so many times and ways that 'I will not speak your name' is to engrave it deeply in time. It doesn't matter what or whose name it is. It names someone. The name, unuttered, is caressed in the mouth regardless, and is curiously spoken."
—Erín Moure