Catullus poems (from penguin translation by Peter Whigham)

G. Valerius Catullus, born around 85 BCE in Verona, spent his adult life in Rome, hobnobbing with the elite. These are the "Lesbia" poems, written to and about Catullus' relationship with Clodia.

5

Lesbia live with me

& love me so

we'll laugh at all

the sour-faced

strictures of the

wise. This sun

once set will rise

again, when our

sun sets follows

night & an

endless sleep.

Kiss me now a

thousand times

& now a

hundred more &

then a hundred

& a thousand

more again till

with so many

hundred

thousand kisses

you & I shall

both lose count

nor any can from

envy of so much

of kissing put

his finger on the

number of sweet

kisses you of me

& I of you,

darling, have

had.

7

Curious to learn how many

kisses of your lips might

satisfy my lust for you,

Lesbia, know as many as are

grains of sand between the

oracle of sweltering Jove at

Ammon & the tomb of old

Battiades the First, in Libya

where the silphium grows;

alternatively, as many as the

sky has stars at night

shining in quiet upon the

furtive loves of mortal men,

as many kisses of your lips

as these might slake your

own obsessed Catullus, dear,

so many that no prying eye

can keep the count

nor spiteful tongue fix

their total in a fatal

formula.

8

Break off fallen Catullus time to cut losses,

bright days shone once, you followed a girl here & there

loved as no other perhaps shall be loved,

then was the time of love's insouciance, your lust as her will

matching. Bright days shone on both of you.

Now, a woman is unwilling. Follow suit

weak as you are, no chasing of mirages, no fallen love,

a clean break, hard against the past. Not again, Lesbia.

No more. Catullus is clear. He won't miss you.

He won't crave it. It is cold. But you will whine.

11

Furius, Aurelius, friends of my youth,

whether I land up in the Far East,

where the long-drawn roll of the Indian Ocean

thumps on the beach,

or whether I find myself surrounded by Hyrcanians,

the supple Arabs, Sacians, Parthian bowmen,

or in the land where the seven-tongued Nile

colours the Middle Sea,

whether I scale the pinnacles of the Alps

viewing the monuments of Caesar triumphant,

the Rhine, the outlandish seas of

the ultimate Britons,

whatever Fate has in store for me,

equally ready for anything,

I send Lesbia this valediction,

succinctly discourteous:

live with your three hundred lovers,

open your legs to them all (simultaneously)

lovelessly dragging the guts out of each of them

each time you do it,

blind to the love that I had for you

once, and that you, tart, wantonly crushed as the

passing plough-blade slashes the flower

at the field's edge.

58

Lesbia, our Lesbia, the same old Lesbia,

Caelius, she whom Catullus loved once

more than himself and more than all his own,

loiters at the cross-roads

and in the backstreets

ready to toss-off the 'magnanimous' sons of Rome.

79

They nickname Lesbia's brother 'pulcher'

since she prefers him to Catullus & the Catulli;

but let him dispose as he will of Catullus

(& the Catulli)

when he finds three men of distinction

willing to greet him in public.

83

Lesbia is extraordinarily vindictive about me in front

of her husband who is thereby moved to fatuous

laughter- a man mulishly insensitive, failing to grasp

that a mindless silence (about me) spells safety while

to spit out my name in curses, baring her white teeth,

means she remembers me, and what is more pungent

still, is scratching the wound ripening herself while

she talks.