Dear lioness, Louise, coming upon
the sonnets was a coup de foudre –
you reached across the centuries
to touch a lonely heart as I thought
nothing old and formal could.
Your lute-songs, silliness and sorrow
inspired me to wordplay – hours
of delight today, tomorrow…
You ambushed me with memories,
a buried sense of self – so long since
I’d been young, yet I was moved.
Nearly five hundred years apart
and some things never change: yours,
Louise, is the lasting roar of love.
Image: Louise Labé – engraving by Pierre Woeiriot, 1555.
Here endeth, for now anyway, my small series of tributes to Louise Labé.
OTHER POSTS IN THE SERIES