Looking through the translations I made during covid times from one of the most derided books in the French literature, Isaac de Benserade’s adaptation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses into rondeaus. They’re so fun to read after so much distance. Should have made a collection out of them, hopefully I still will.

Here’s one I published in the journal Black Scat:

Full of finesse in plotting and misrule,
Mercury one day tried to pull the wool
Over Apollo's eyes, fleecing His herd,
And promised, if he wouldn't say a word,
Old Battus would receive one well-bred bull.

This luckless wretch knew how to turn a tool
To his success, but wasn't the sharpest tool;
The guileful God came back to test his word,
	Full of finesse.

He promised him an easy pocketful
Of copper coins to pay his debts in full
And buy new shoes if he would say a word,
But he said more than He had wanted heard.
Of animals, the worst to be's a fool
	Full of finesse.

(Mercury, having stolen the herds of Apollo, was spotted by a certain Battus. Mercury promised him one cow for keeping the secret and then, in a different form, tempted him with further promises, getting him to reveal who had stolen the herd. For this, Mercury indignantly turned him into a touchstone.)