from The Banned Babylon Sonnets of Petrarch

 

May Heaven’s brimstone rain down, reprobate,

upon your hair since sin is such a thrill—

you who ate acorns, drank the river’s swill,

then robbed the poor to be both rich and great!

 

You nest of treachery, you incubate

for everybody almost every ill!

Slave to wine, beds and food, your overkill

produces proof that is beyond debate!

 

Girls and old goats cavort in every room,

which for their frolics Satan has arrayed

with bellows, mirrors and the flames of doom.

 

You were not raised with cushions in the shade,

but nude and shoeless where the briars bloom—

may God now smell the stench your life has made!