The Poems

by Catullus

“Restored at the tail-end of my life “from Troezene, my only Theseus “dearer than years to your father “of whom Fate & your own zest “would rob him a second time, “even before his failing eyes “had gotten used to your face,

who still gazes where the hull has dwindled, who revolves in her bride’s heart a maze of sorrow.

The river god heaps the foliage outside & in until the house is dressed for a bride’s bower-bed.

Inexorably, fate follows thread, from spindle to the shuttle running.

their ageing bosoms showing fist marks of their sorrow.

And Polyxena, death-given, too shall watch… and watch the earth-tomb rise, where her maiden limbs will fall.

And dawn light finds the nurse who tries today’s neck fillet, her mother reads the sign & smiles: the goddess was not coy in love – young fruit will follow.

The loveless child neglects its parent’s death a brother’s blood trickles from brothers’ hands the first son’s girl attracts the father’s lust who seeks a step-dame & a son’s demise unwittingly the youngster mounts his mother her vicious incest spurning the house-kin spirits: laws bouleversé, and the welter such, those of Hill-Heaven have withdrawn their care.

the girl takes from her lover thrusts into her soft bodice and forgets there… till her mother takes her off guard – she is startled, the love-fruit trundles ponderously across the floor and the girl, blushing, stoops gingerly to pick it up.

Who scans the bright machinery of the skies & plots the hours of star-set & star-rise, this or that planet as it earthward dips, the coursing brightness of the sun’s eclipse, who knows the dreams that fill Endymion’s head & draw sly Cynthia to his Latmian bed –

or that she lies in bed at night alone, her body wasted with intensive fire, her soul devoid of all save one desire?

What God is this, unless the God of Love, who cannot brook his servants’ long remove?

A plague on smithies, be they crude or fine, cursed be the smelter, cursed the teeming mine!

loth to sink seawards e’er the night has gone.

Pour then for me, upon your bridal night, before you doff your silks & quench the light, before your eager bosom you yield up, the mingled fragrance of the onyx cup, onyx, whose contents have so often led to the chaste dalliance of the marriage bed.

deeds bring words to sight & touch.

The virgin lifted across this threshold was bogus, the groom not the first to finger her,

I have often caught her whispers with her maids rehearsing their love-parties.

whom Venus deprives of soft sleep, whom the Greek Muse no longer tempts, who turn restlessly in an empty bed, call me ‘my friend’,

“Why loiter in Verona, Catullus, where for men of our circle cold limbs in an empty bed are the rule – not the exception?”

your name will grow brighter as the paper yellows, while the subtle spider fails to hang his delicate filaments over a neglected name.

My harrowing at the hands of Venus (whom no man should ever trust) is well-known in Pieria –

You opened a path where the field had been shut before.

With supple steps Catullus’s bright-shining Goddess found her way thither, her woman’s sandals echoing on the worn threshold-stone.

before the first & second winters with their lovers’ nights had satisfied her bride’s love-greed & made the shattered wedding-yoke endurable,

No dove uxoriously enjoyed its snow-white mate with more promiscuous beak than you collecting bites for kisses,

what a woman tells her lover in desire should be written out on air & running water.

come clothed in your excellences – I cannot think tenderly of you, sink to what acts you dare – I can never cut this love.

I do not now expect – or want – my love returned, nor cry to the moon for Lesbia to be chaste:

Gallus is myopic: himself a husband – giving a young lad lessons in cuckoldry!

a mindless silence (about me) spells safety while to spit out my name in curses, baring her white teeth, means she remembers me,

I hate and I love. And if you ask me how, I do not know: I only feel it, and I’m torn in two.

A taste for his sort of forbidden fruit is no way to wax plump.

in the overwhelming attraction pure sin holds for you, Gellius, or anything smacking of sin.

his arse is probably the cleaner & nicer of the two:

Accept then, in our parents’ custom these offerings, this leave-taking echoing for ever, brother, through a brother’s tears. – ‘Hail & Farewell’.

When an auctioneer’s seen with a good-looking boy (by himself) it is fair to presume that there has been purchase & sale – in a closed market.

What more can life offer than the longed for unlooked for event when it happens?

Men always praise an honest whore, keen for the price of what she proposes to do,

Your darts we shall continue to parry – with a pass of the cloak, while in our epigrams you stand transfixed in ignominy.