Prayer
Lord, give me back my black hair,
iron my skin smooth,
wipe the age spots off and rub hard,
plant me again at the back
porch steps in Mary Campinelli’s yard,
while she fumbles for the key
and I can’t think of anything to say
under the honeysuckle-smelling stars,
and make her turn again to me and stammer,
“Je vous aimez.”
Je vous aimez …
And this time, Lord,
don’t let me correct her grammar.
John Tabb DuVal’s awards for verse translation include a major NEA and both the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award and the Raiziss/de Palchi Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets. His Song of Roland was a finalist for the PEN Translation award in 2013. His poem “The Song of Roland” appeared in Jiggery-Pokery Semicentennial, and his Fabliaux, Fair and Foul (Medieval French comic verse tales) has been reissued twice by Pegasus Paperbooks.