A sestina by medieval Provençal troubadour Arnaut Daniel

• I have a firm desire, and I enter
• Unbending, driven deeply, hard as nail. 
• What lies! Such gossip has plundered my soul—
• But since I cannot bear this flimsy rod, 
• I’ll play the flute until it cries uncle
• In secret, before her closet-chamber. 

• I go softly limp before that chamber
• Where conquering men can never enter; 
• The bedroom guard, both angels and uncles, 
• Dissolve pride—even to the fingernail—
• Of suitors, stiff like boys before the rod. 
• Such fears of not being hers, in my soul! 

• At least in bodied flesh, if not in soul, 
• Let her hide me, once, in that chamber! 
• Let wounds the heart embraced not spare the rod! 
• Servant to her secrets, I should enter! 
• Now bind me close to her—as flesh to nail—
• And heed no warnings from friend or uncle.

• Even the sweet daughter of my uncle
• I never loved so well—with all my soul. 
• The quick between her finger and her nail, 
• So would I be, and press into her chamber. 
• And molded to its will, love would enter
• This heart, this soldier with a tender rod.

• Since syrup last flowed from a withered rod, 
• And Adam fathered nephew and uncle, 
• Never has love blossomed so! Now enter
• My heart, and dwell in neither flesh nor soul, 
• But where she lives—in each street, each chamber
• That bears me, Father, to the Sacred Nail. 

• At last, veil bloodied by the caulking nail! 
• My heart holds her, as bark to sapling-rod. 
• My dizzying tower’s joy, her chamber
• Where no love for father, friend, or uncle
• Remains—only Heaven’s sweet-doubled soul
• In spooning’s cup, where I slowly enter.

• Arnaut spouts song, of nail crying, “uncle!” 
• By grace of her who claims the rod’s bent soul, 
• To all! Unchamber her praise, and enter!

—translated by Garrick Davis

Arnaut Daniel (1180-1200) was one of the more famous medieval Provençal troubadour poets. His verse is marked by an obscurity of thought and expression, a style called trobar clus (“hermetic verse”). Daniel invented more than one verse form, including the sestina, a series of six six-line unrhymed stanzas followed by a three-line seventh stanza. The last word of each line in the first stanza is repeated in each succeeding stanza until the seventh, in which two of the repeating words are incorporated per line. T.S. Eliot’s dedication of The Waste Land to Ezra Pound included a phrase from Dante, who regarded Daniel as miglior fabbro (“the best maker” — i.e. poet).