Villon's Ballade:Dialogue With His Heart

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François Villon was for a while at the court of Charles d'Orléans, himself a very fine poet and father of the future Louis XII. Like Jean Genet, Villon was a thief, a poet and philosopher who got taken up by the rich and famous. Genet was a fostered child, and Villon was an orphan adopted by his of that name, a scholar and chaplain."
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VILLON'S DIALOGUE WITH HIS HEART
By François Villon

Who's there ? It's me. Who's "me" ? Your heart,
that holds on by the merest thread;
I feel my blood ebb and my strength depart
when I see you hanging down your head
like some poor lurcher cringing in a shed.
And why is that ? Because you live too fast.
So what ? It's I who come off worst.
Why, you ask ? I'll think about it. Let me be!
When will you start thinking ? When my childhood's past.
I'll say no more. That's quite all right with me.

What do you want ? To be a man of substance.
You're thirty now. No younger than a mule.
Is that still childhood ? No. Then madness
has got hold of you/ Where ? By the lapel ?
You know nothing. Yes I do: I can tell
the difference between flies and milk. One's white,
one's black. Is that all ? Is that too trite
for you ? I'll start again. Let's see..
You're lost. Well, I'll put up a fight.
I'll say no more. That's quite all right with me.

From all this I get sorrow, you get pain.
If you had been some poor demented fool
I might have had some reason to complain,
but good and bad you wind from the same spool.
Either your head is filled with wool
or else you want damnation more than bliss.
Well, what is your reply to this ?
I'll be above it when I pass away.
God, how comforting! What wisdom and what eloquence!
I'll say no more. That's quite all right with me.

Where do your defects come from ? From ill-luck.
When Saturn packed my bag for me
he put them in. What rubbish! You're star-struck.
You are master yet think yourself unfree.
Solomon has written - you can see
it in the Bible - 'Men of sense
have power over planets and their influence'.
I don't believe it. As they made me, so I'll be.
What did you say ? Just my kind of sense.
I'll say no more. That's quite all right with me.

You want to live ? May God give me the power!
You must then... What ?! Read every hour,
be penitent. Read what ? Philosophy -
and leave your trivial friends. I'll see.
Now don't forget. Don't be perverse;
don't wait so long that things get even worse.
I'll say no more. That's quite all right with me.

Translated by Anthony Weir

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