Joachim du Bellay: Heureux qui, comme Ulysse…

Written By Ryan Wilson

Ryan Wilson (translator)

He’s happy, like Ulysses, who completes
His journey, or, like him who won the fleece
And came back full of wisdom and great feats,
To live his life out with his folks in peace.
When will I see again chimney-smoke waft
Above my village, and when will my eyes
Again look on my little house’s croft,
A province to me, and a greater prize?
The shack my fathers built provides me far
More joy than palaces of Rome’s design;
A slate roof thrills me more than marbles do,
More than the Roman Tiber, the French Loire,
My quaint Lyré more than the Palatine,
More than sea air, the sweetness of Anjou.

Ryan Wilson

Ryan Wilson was born in Griffin, Georgia, in 1982, and raised in nearby Macon. His books include The Stranger World (Measure, 2017), winner of the Donald Justice Poetry Prize, How to Think Like a Poet (Wiseblood, 2019), and Proteus Bound: Selected Translations 2008-20 (Franciscan UP, 2021). His work appears widely in periodicals such as Best American Poetry, Birmingham Poetry Review, First Things, Five Points, The Hopkins Review, The New Criterion, The Sewanee Review, and The Yale Review. Co-editor of the anthology, Contemporary Catholic Poetry (Paraclete, 2022), he is Editor-in-Chief of Literary Matters, and he teaches at The Catholic University of America and in the M.F.A. program at the University of St. Thomas—Houston.

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