​He seems like a god to me,
more than a god, if this makes sense,
he who can sit across from you  
watching you, hearing
 
your sweet laugh which seizes from me
my own senses! From the very first instant, each time
that I see you, Lesbia, nothing is on
the tip of my tongue,
 
numb, my language, thick in my mouth, yet fire runs
fiercely through my body, my ears resound with
their own sound, my eyes are lit up with their own 
dazzling darkness...
 
Leisure, Catullus, is bringing you down,
it’s too much leisure that accounts for these extravagant gestures,
leisure, that brings down kings, that 
brings down whole cities.