​You ask, Lesbia, how many kisses it will take for me  
to be done with this kissing business.  As many as there are grains 
of Libyan sand in the silphium-fields of Cyrene between  
the burning heat of Jove’s temple and 
the sacred tomb of ancient Battus,  
or,  
as many as there are stars, on a quiet night,  
looking down on furtive lovers – that  
is how many kisses it would be enough to kiss you with  
for this impossibly love-stricken Catullus, enough 
to be beyond the count of anyone watching, too impossibly 
many to be taken up in any idle conversation…