Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love,
and let us value at one cent
the rumours of old men.
The sun can set and rise again; for us,
when our brief light has set,
we have only the night’s perpetual sleep.
Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred,
then another thousand, then a second hundred,
then we will have made so many thousands
that we confuse ourselves, and neither we ourselves
nor anyone who might want to speak ill of us
will even know how many kisses they are talking about!