odi et amo

In honor of the chapter on The Maid's Tragedy that I am currently writing, here is a small handful of Catullus. Mostly sublime Catullus, really, because despite The Maid's Tragedy, I'm not in the right mood for the mean (or the mean-and-sexy) stuff. I'm also too exhausted to look up the Latin, or make up my mind about much of anything. And...back to the writing, now.

Poem 11 (because everyone should have a chance to rewrite Sappho)

Catullus' comrades, wherever he goes,
whether he reaches the Indians' realm,
where the far-resounding eastern wave
pummels the shore,
visits Hyrcani, effeminate Arabs,
Sacae, or Parthians laden with arrows,
or the fields where the floods of the sevenfold Nile
deposit their colors,
or walks across the lofty Alps,
seeing the achievements of Caesar the Great,
the Gallic Rhine, the choppy main,
the faraway Britons,
ready for any adventure, whatever
the will of heaven's inhabitants brings,
say a few words to my girl, a few
unfriendly words.
Let her live and rejoice with her band of adulterers,
embracing three hundred at once, though truly
loving none, and never fail
to rupture their groins,
but not rely on my love as before.
It died by the guilt of that girl, as a flower
falls at the edge of a meadow when touched
by a passing plow.

Poem 48 (because I am writing about boy love)

If somebody gave me permission, Juventius,
to cover with kisses your honeyed eyes,
I'd kiss three hundred thousand times
and never approach the point of satiety,
not if the yield of our osculation
were thicker than billowing waves of grain.

Poem 85

I hate and I love. You ask me why? Who knows?
But I feel it occur and I am tortured.

~Catullus, translations by David Mulroy