I, Catullus
These are the poems my Clodia writes back to, or provokes, in the poems collected in I, Clodia
(2) Sparrow
Look at you, Sparrow, playing in the folds of her
clothes, her favourite accessory, kept
right up against her, coaxed out onto her
finger, provoked into a tiny
attack, the way my own incandescent
desire is provoked without having
any pet myself to play with, though I need
that distraction from love’s pain
I believe that she is seeking, a quieting of
the intolerable – if only I could play with you
the way she does, and forget my own suffering!
I would concede each round to you, Sparrow, as happily as
Atalanta welcomed the distraction of an apple in the middle of a race
she wanted only to lose, to give in to love.....
(5) Let us live, and love me
Oh, god, Clodia, let us live, and love me.
Old men talking up scandal, why should we care?
I’d account all the damage at one cent (if
that). If we, like the sun, could rise again when
once we’d set, we could wait an age, or more, but
our brief light having set, our night’s eternal.
Kiss me, one thousand times and then a hundred,
then a thousand times more, a hundred more, then
when we’ve kissed such a multitude of kisses
we confuse our own selves, then no one, even
us, could state what precise amount of kisses
they’re accusing us of, and ... case dismissed!
(7) How many kisses
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…
(3) Pipiabat (used to chirp)
Let revelry cease and charming people pause their charming,
let flights of angels sing him to his rest –
my girl’s sparrow is dead,
the sparrow she loved so much,
the sparrow she cared about more than she cared for her own eyes.
Oh, he was sweet as honey, this little bird,
and was as familiar with her as a little girl with her own mother,
not wanting to fly away
but hopping about her body, and chirping to her
confidentially.
Now, he has embarked on that dark journey
from which no one ever can return,
while I stand here on this fragile shore howling curses
into the underworld, where death takes everything that was beautiful,
bearing even this sparrow away from me –
this miserable sparrow, who has caused the eyes of my girl
to be so red and swollen with weeping.
(51) Like a god
Like a god, he looks like to me, or, I’d say
more than god-like, he who can sit there, mirror-
like, across from where you are sitting. can sit
watching you, hearing
your sweet laugh, your laugh which from me steals my own
senses! From the very first instant, each time
that I see you, Clodia, nothing’s on the
tip of my tongue, stopped
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...
I blame all this poetry, it has brought me
down, it’s all this “being a poet.” I blame
art (not just mine) for all of history – yes,
that whole disaster!
(83) Still talking
Lesbia has nothing good to say about me
in front of her husband,
and he is enough of a fool
to be pleased by this!
Can somebody be so oblivious?
If she had forgotten us, if she could hold her tongue,
I’d know she was over me.
As long as she is still sniping and interrupting
she is not only still remembering
but, what really counts, still burning -
and, what I care about most, still talking.
(8) These extravagances end now (in limping iambs)
Give up, Catullus, these extravagances end now,
what you can see is over, Please. Just. Call. Over.
The sun itself encouraged you back then, shining
on you wherever you were led, your girl cracking
her whip – a girl we loved as no girl has ever
been loved before. Good times were staged those days – days when
you wanted it, and truly she did not not want
it – yes, the sun, it really shone on you those days.
But now, she doesn’t want you. So, then, you also
at last must harden up, stop chasing her, tragic
and whiplashed, but rein in your heart, and stand steadfast.
So goodbye, girl! Catullus is resolved, no more
demands against your will, no more of this chasing –
but what post-despot life is left for you? Now who
will be your supplicant? Who’ll think you beautiful?
And who will you love now? Who’ll call you their girlfriend?
Who will get kissed, whose lips are about to be bitten?
But you, Catullus, hold out till the end of time.
(92) The signs
Lesbia has nothing good to say about me and she says nothing
never but talks non-stop: if she doesn’t love me, I’ll die.
So what are the signs? The same signs I see in me: assiduously
as I put her down, I will die if I can’t love her.
(86) A grain of salt
If being tall, blonde and poised makes Quintia beautiful
I too would have to concede she is beautiful but
she is not beautiful to me. How can I think her beautiful
when she has not a grain of salt in all her insipidity?
I think Lesbia’s beauty has swept up into itself all the beauty
of everyone else so that no one else now, really, can be beautiful.
(79) The favours of a few
Lesbius is pretty fortunate, chosen by Lesbia
over Catullus and all his people, but who
wouldn’t choose such extravagance,
a man who would sell Catullus and all his people
for the favours of a few rising stars?
(70) On wind, on water
There is not one man, she says,
she could love so much
as me, not even if Jupiter himself asked to marry her.
She says.......But what a woman says
to a lover in the heat of passion
should be written
on the wind, on running water
(87) On my part
There is not one woman who could say
she was loved so much
as my own Lesbia was loved by me.
Not in any love compact could anyone be said
to have carried out their fiduciary duty
to the extent to which, on my part, I
can be found to have been true
to you.
(72) Liking less
You used to say there was no one you truly knew but Catullus,
Lesbia, and there was not a god you would hold before me.
I placed you before all others, not just out of desire
but in the way a father might raise up his own sons – or sons-in-law.
Having known you, the more I expend myself in burning for you
the cheaper and more trivial you seem to me.
You want to know why? Because pain such as this
makes me like you less the more that I love you.
(58) More than himself
Caelius, I tell you: Lesbia, our Lesbia, this
Lesbia loved by Catullus more than himself
and more than all he owns, now
in alleyways and at the crossroads
tosses off any citizen of Rome.
(85) I hate and I love
Hating and loving, I make no sense even to my own self –
I can’t explain how I feel! Crucified, that’s how I feel!
(75) So lost in service
I am so reduced by my love for you, Lesbia,
so lost in service to your faults,
that I could not think well of you now
however true you proved yourself to be,
and could not, no matter what you did,
from loving you, desist.
(77) Ruinous
Banking on your friendship, Rufus Caelius, was for me
a bad investment (bad? The cost has been ruinous!) –
allowing you to worm your way in
till now my guts are churning.
It is not the loss of what was good I mind.
Worse, you have withdrawn from me the drug
I lived for, along with the pestilence of our friendship.
(76) Standing fast
If a man can find his happiness in remembrance of his own
integrity, thinking over his own faithfulness
to every contractual promise, with not one violation, ever,
no invocation, in the heat of passion, of the name of a god solely
to deceive a man,
then you’ve set your life ahead up well, Catullus,
thanks to this thankless love.
Because every right thing that could have been said
or done was said and done by you.
All this, undertaken in good faith, was taken as nothing
so why amplify its meaning now
with all this extravagant suffering?
Stand fast, Catullus, be resolute this time
in your retreat
and, with no invocation to any god,
from all this misery, desist.
It is difficult to give up such an enduring love,
but however you like to do it, difficult as it is,
this is what has to be done.
To recover from this sickness you must
take back control of your own self
if you can, and even if you cannot
it has to be done.
Oh, God! If you have any pity in you, or if ever
you have come to the aid of anyone
in mortal extremity, look on me in my misery
and, if I have truly lived by the rules,
rescue me from this fever
that has overcome me,
before it destroys me, utterly!
A drowsy numbness pains my senses,
and my heart aches…
I am not looking now for her to single me out
or even, since that was always too much
to ask, to refrain from loving everyone else –
I can set this sickness aside
and take responsibility for my own health.
Oh, God, all the gods, restore my health to me!
(60) The final entreaty
Was it a lioness from a Libyan mountain
gave birth to you or were you born
from the metal-hearted Scylla, that you
could respond to this
final entreaty, made
in such desperate grief,
with such cruel and finely wrought contempt?
(11) Over and over
Whether he should venture as far as India
where the shore is pounded upon by rough surf
without ceasing once until morning, friends who’d
follow Catullus,
whether it’s the Caspian sea he reaches,
whether soft Arabian sands, or whether
those reclining stretches of land the Nile floods
over and over,
whether he should scale the most lofty Alps, and
gaze on the great monument Caesar won, the
Gallic Rhine, that horrible water, or risk
barbarous Britain,
willing if you’d be to attempt all this, then
might you, maybe working together, and if
all goes smoothly, take to my girl these words, my
last correspondence:
let her live, and fare well with all her lovers
all three hundred wrapped in her arms together
not one of them truthfully loved, but one and all
fucked up forever.
(101) Ave atque vale
Many the cities and many the seas I crossed on my way here.
Here, brother, I come to grieve, and give the funeral rites
with all propriety, this, the last thing I’ll give to my brother
to whose mute ashes I don’t know why I should speak.
I can’t argue with fate, and fate has taken you from me
undeservedly so, wrenched you from out of time’s flow.
Now there is left for us nothing but this, an old-fashioned service,
these sad, dutiful rites, done as instructed to do.
So accept this last tear flooded brother’s bequest
now and forever yours brother hail and fare well.
(65) Utterly shattered
Although I am exhausted, utterly shattered, from
the pain of unrelenting sorrow, Hortalus, and
although I find myself cast completely
adrift, at a complete remove from
any inspiration, my mind
feverish and numb,
unable to produce anything with any life
to it, when my own brother
has only so recently been swept away
out of time’s flow, the waters
of Lethe lapping at his pale foot, now
buried, crushed under Trojan soil,
forever out of sight (never again will
I look upon you, brother, never,
surely, will I cease from loving you, never
will I write anything but elegies
on your death, like a nightingale pouring forth
a grief abroad, singing for every poet
lost for words) – yet, Hortalus, even in all
this grief, still I send you these translations
of Callimachus, so you won’t imagine
I could let your words slip from my mind
and blow away in the storm, just as
a girl might have forgotten
the apple in the folds of her dress
given to her as a pledge
of forbidden love, rolling now
onto the floor as she leaps up
at her mother’s entrance, and startles,
caught out once again, by love betrayed...
(64) Dissolved like words
It began with the pine trees from Mt Pelion
taking to the seas, cresting the waves of Neptune
and coming to rest exactly where the story
of the Argonauts was to commence, those
heroes ready and waiting to take to the seas
to seek the Golden Fleece, sending
across the vast depths of the ocean this
framework of pine woven together
by the goddess of cities....So new a thing
this was to plough the ocean that it raised the Nereids
themselves from its churning depths, their
breasts as new a sight to the men
as the ship to the Nereids. And this was when
Peleus fell instantly in love with Thetis, when Thetis
herself did not turn away from the love
of a mortal man, and when her father himself saw
that the two must be wed.
Oh, this was the time of heroes, a golden age, when
heroes were born of gods, their mothers also
to be praised...
This is what epic poetry is made for, and this
poem is made to sing of Peleus, and the marriage
of Peleus and Thetis,
blazing with torches
circled round by the whole sea
lavished with the attention of the gods,
and freely entered into on both sides.
And so, the marriage day came about
and all of Thessaly filled the palace
to overflowing, a whirling crowd
all swept up into the celebrations,
arraigned in finery,
gifts carried high.
And so, a whole country
is emptied out of its people,
every town deserted,
every farm left behind,
every house closed,
every field untilled,
soft, the necks of the oxen
who would have pulled the ploughs,
uncleared, the vineyard grounds,
unpruned, the trees,
and the tools rusting over where they lie.
All opulence now could be found
in the palace of Peleus
extending hall to hall
further and further
inwards and inwards
extension after extension
accommodating the hoards of gold
the hoards of silver
ivory thrones shining
tables set with every glittering thing
and who wouldn’t take pleasure in all this?
And the true altar at the heart of it all –
the marriage bed, a bed of ivory,
and on the bed, a coverlet,
and on the coverlet, embroidered
scenes from the heroic times
gone by.
Theseus, sailing swiftly away, is here
presented watched by a frenzied Ariadne
unable to believe she is seeing what she sees
when she sees herself, waking up from
what were her dreams, alone
and abandoned on an empty shore.
And he, Theseus, vanishes
into his future, as the promises
he made dissolve like words
written on water, in the middle
of a storm.
And there Ariadne stands
like a marble statue, a marble statue
dropping its headband, hair
flying free, a statue unravelling, drapery
falling open, breasts uncovered, and
the sea at her feet carrying
the fallen garments away
with the tide,
as if she could possibly care
about her clothing when all she has ever, ever
cared about is you!
Love is nothing but pain
and pain is all that loving Theseus
ever could have led to,
Theseus with his mind fixed
on the Minotaur, with ambitious
dreams to save a people, a people who
surely needed saving whatever the cost to Ariadne
who loved Theseus from the moment
she saw him, her innocence at
that instant lost forever, fire running
fiercely through her body, her ears
resounding with their own sound, eyes
lit up with dazzling darkness,
love’s pleasures stirred up
along with love’s torment, but who
could want to feel this way?
Her heart would almost fail her,
she would grow paler than gold
when Theseus braved death
for glory, in the labyrinth
of the Minotaur, from which
his safe return, the Minotaur having fallen
to Theseus like a forest to a storm,
was possible only because of the thread
of Ariadne, unrolled behind him
as she had told him to unroll it
on his way in, there still
where he had left it, a faithful guide
back to the sunlight outside.
But as if lost in a maze I find myself
taking a turning, all this a digression from
the story I was telling, and there is
more yet to tell, of how a girl, flying
from home, leaving the love of
a father, a sibling, a mother
all for the sweetness
of passion, all to dream
for a time of love, found herself waking
and for Theseus already to have forgotten her
disappearing into nothing but sea-foam in the wind...
And now she can only despair and rail and cry out
into the wind-sore skies, high on a mountain
looking out across the nothing seas
at nothing, or wading out
at low tide through sands and sands
as only the wavering water
lifts itself about a raised knee.
Shivering, she cries, “And so, after I abandon
my father, sibling, mother, make enemies
of my friends, you, faithless, leave me,
all promises forgotten, alone, on
an empty shore, as if you think
the gods of old no longer
rule, as if you think it nothing
to cast away all your promises, as if
to unclasp a hand, to leave a knee
bare where once a hand
rested, was nothing, your implacable
heart incapable of pity.
And yet...how sweet you sounded
when you used to let me hope
you wished only to be married to me
and promised me promises
now blown away in the wind.
Let no woman ever listen ever
to the promises a man makes
in the heat of passion,
when anything will be promised,
any oath sworn, and every
promise forgotten like steam
evaporating into nothing.
And I, I would abandon a brother
to be with you when you swore
you would die without me,
for which I should be given up
to wild birds and animals
to tear me apart and leave what’s left
strewn about unmourned, no
funeral rites for me, not
a handful of dirt over my remains
if any remains there may be.
What lioness gave birth to you on
a mountain, what sea spat you forth,
what metal-hearted Scylla, that
you could respond to love,
like this?
Marriage! I’d have settled for
slavery, washing your white
feet, or wasting my life
away embroidering
you some intricate coverlet
for your bed...
But why am I lamenting wildly like this
into the winds which will never
hear me or reply,
when he is tossing and turning
somewhere in the middle of the ocean
and all that seaweed at my feet
is empty of all humanity.
It seems to be my fate
to call out to those who cannot
hear me or respond –
but nothing that happened should
ever have happened! Better
for that journey from the provinces
never to have been made, father
never left, story of the
Minotaur never told,
and no lies listened to
from a faithless lover.
Because where can I escape to,
wherever I should go?
Roiling seas divide me from
the mountains of my homeland,
my father will never receive me after
I abandoned my brother for
a lover, drenched
in my brother’s blood, and
I have no marriage to take refuge
in, when he, the one I loved,
disappears like the wind,
rowing against the current in
full flight.
There is nothing for me
on these empty shores, this empty
island is no home, and yet
there is nowhere to go
and no way out, surrounded
by sea on all sides,
on all sides trapped, with
no escape and no hope
of escape, every thing
I see speaks of nothing but death.
But before death closes down the last
of my vision and takes away all of
my will, ruined as I am, I will
demand at least to be heard
by the gods if not by anyone else
and secure for myself a promise
that my words will be remembered,
that it is Theseus who will suffer from
the anguish I suffer from now, and the
forgetfulness with which he abandoned me
will shadow everything he tries to do from now
and for forever.
And when she spoke the whole world
juddered into a new alignment, the surf-topped
seas trembling and the stars shaking in the skies above.
And Theseus let slip from his mind, as
the storm clouded over it, the last promises
he had held fast until then, and so no gave no sign
of his safety to his sorrowing father
as he sailed, mind adrift, into port, the story
being that his father, when Theseus
was to set sail, would not send him away
with his blessing but in full grieving
with ash rubbed through his hair, and the ship
fitted out with a dirty sail stained red with
rusted iron. But if Theseus should miraculously
succeed and his life be spared, then he was to
remember these commands of his father,
stored in his memory, locked
in his heart, and held safe against the erosure
of time, that as soon as the ship
should be in sight of shore, the rust red sails
must be taken down, and in their place, the white sail
be raised that will signal preparations
should begin for a lifetime of celebration.
This promise Theseus had remembered steadily
until it blew out of his mind the way
clouds will drift off in the wind, so that
his father, gazing out to sea already
exhausted with grief, on seeing
the rust red sails, threw himself from his high
look-out to his death on the rocks below.
And Theseus returned to a home wracked with grief
to feel himself torn apart with the same agonies
of guilt and anguish that he himself
had delivered to Ariadne and which she felt
still as she stood, gazing into the empty
sea, at his always disappearing ship,
while on another part of the coverlet Bacchus
can be seen, seeking Ariadne, aflame
with love, and over here are all the followers
of Bacchus, ranting and wailing and tossing
their heads, beating their tambourines,
singing in galliambic rhythms, blowing
raucous blasts from their horns, a terrible
cacophony, though not worse than
the piping flute...And this is what
was embroidered on the coverlet, gazed
at by all the Thessalian youth on their way
to the drinks table and onwards each
to their own delicious oblivion,
as the palace emptied out and was filled
by the presence of the gods.
Down they came, Chiron from Mt Pelion
with all the flowers of the levelled valleys,
Peneus came from the valleys of Tempe
bringing bay trees, plane trees and poplar,
Prometheus the prophet with fading scars,
and, finally, the father of all the gods
with all his sons, except for those
gods who chose not to honour such
a wedding. Except for those gods, all
were present and shining and easy in the
splendour of the palace.
And then arrived the Fates, with shaking bodies
but prophetic words and their hands
never at rest but working always
at their weaving, the left hand holding
the distaff of wool, the right hand
drawing out the wool, and their teeth
breaking off threads to make the work even.
With little bits of wool caught
between their teeth, and drifts of wool
at their feet, they sang:
Hear now this prophesy, given to you on this day of all days:
Strong as your leadership is, in time it shall be not you but
such a son that his name will resound through the far halls of time -
so the weaving runs on,
and the threads draw together.
No house has ever yet harboured a love that is greater than your love,
Never the pact of fidelity that will be honoured as yours will,
Thetis and Peleus, now and forever bonded together –
and the weaving runs on,
and the threads draw together.
Fearless will be the son to be born to you, famous Achilles,
Known to his enemies not by his back but face to face, always,
Fearless and fleet he will prove to be, striking like lightning in battle –
so the weaving runs on,
and the threads draw together.
Never a warrior ever will be to compare with him
Driven by grief and by rage as the blood of the Trojans
Runs in the fields in the last days of Troy’s proud history –
and the weaving runs on,
and the threads draw together.
After the brilliant deeds of this fearless warrior
Mothers will tear at their hair and beat at their breasts
Grieving the children they see for the last time to bury them,
so the weaving runs on,
and the threads draw together.
As when a reaper should take too early the still forming wheat ears
Never to ripen in full summer sunshine, so will the iron-red
Trojan battlefields after the fighting be strewn with young bodies -
and the weaving runs on,
and the threads draw together.
Testament to his heroicism will be the wave of Scamander
Pouring itself into swift-flowing Hellespont choking its current
Clogged up with corpses, the streams running warm from the bloodshed –
so the weaving runs on,
and the threads draw together.
Testament finally to his great valour comes after his death
Death being meted out also to honour him with a girl’s body
Gilding his burial mound with her golden young limbs –
and the weaving runs on,
and the threads draw together.
This was the way that the Greeks in their victory relished their fortune,
As, on the edge of a meadow, a passing plow might cut down a flower,
So was Polyxena, silently bowing her head, cut down –
so the weaving runs on,
and the threads draw together.
Therefore why hesitate to bring about this marriage all favoured,
Now let the husband receive with due eagerness his willing bride,
Now let the bride be bestowed on a husband still swept up in passion –
and the weaving runs on,
and the threads draw together.
When the girl’s nurse will return in the morning no longer will she
Circle her neck with yesterday’s ribbon, nor yet will her mother
Worry about her sleeping alone in a barren marriage –
so the weaving runs on,
and the threads draw together.
Such were the prophecies given by the Fates
to Peleus, in a time before ours
when the gods still visited the homes
of heroes, setting themselves before us in
dazzling display. Often the father of all gods
would light up his temple,
returning to look on at the sacrifices
made in his name, often from
the highest peak of Parnassus the roaring
Thyiades came following
Liber as everyone stoked the fires
of his altars all through the cities, often
in times of war one god or another
would intervene pulling
the strings of fate one way or
another. But how could they return
now when all of humanity
has become so unspeakably awful,
brothers with hands steeped in
fraternal blood, parents ungrieved for,
fathers waiting for the deaths of
their first-borns to take for themselves
their sons’ wives in marriage, a mother
sleeping with a son with no thought
of how she dishonouors the gods
of her household? Entangled in such
unspeakable crimes as we are, how could
the gods do other than turn away
from the sight of us?
These are not days in which gods might appear to us,
these are days the gods hide from the light of.
(63) Attis at large
And so Attis, seasick, heart sore, having left so terribly fast,
with a pause, a leap, a landing, galliambically arrived
in the shady regions, wood-clothed, in the goddessy depths of dark
in a rage, a grief, a wild mood, having come so terribly far,
and himself, still him, he tore off, with a flint, all his manly parts –
so that she (now she) when she saw she was all a a a a girl,
even while still bleeding fresh blood, a new stain on that shagpile earth,
in a flash, a leap, with no pause, she took up here a tambourine –
tambourine of yours, your symbol, sign of Cybele’s syllables –
with a clash, a strike, a ringing, her soft fingers on the stretched skin,
she began to sing this whole song, in a tremble to, to the throng:
All of us, not cis, but sisters – with a leap of nothing but faith
let’s take off, let’s rush, let’s stampede, like a herd on the, the, the loose –
you are lost, you’re all in exile, with a past you have left behind
you have only me, your one hope, here to lead, if you’ll follow me,
after all that we have been through, salty seas of masculinity
we will sail no more, no, not we – let us now be all spiritual,
that’s to say, let’s sing, and sing loud, with a clash of the tambourine
and with tossing heads and wild leaps, we must throw ourselves into this,
as if in to fire, with no fear – a religious sort of penance!
And in need of no persuading, the stampede, if it was that, starts –
all of them, not cis, but sisters, taking off with a lightness of heart
like a sisterhood, a herd loosed, with a clash of the tambourine.
And so Attis, no true woman, was swept along with the rest,
in the lead, but led, herself led, the clash of the tambourine
a resounding beat in her head, fa-la-LA, la la la la LA,
like a heifer still unbroken, a disorder of flailing flight.
And the sisterhood, a herd loose, kept the beat of the tambourine.
And the sisters, having found peace, could all sleep when the ringing ceased,
having come so far, so hard won, they were restless no more but at peace,
after all that they had been through, having come so terribly far.
Yes but when the sun with eyes bright looked out at the whole airy sky,
and the whole expanse of hard earth, and the whole wilderness of sea,
yes and when the sunlight drove forth all the shadows of the long night,
and when sleep itself was sent off, or took flight, as Attis awoke,
well then sleep, not Attis, found rest; it was sleep that would rest at last.
Not so Attis, sleep departed, and his madness departed too,
not so Attis, who reviewed all he had done, and all in his heart,
and could see the lie it had been, and see all that the lie had cost,
and with surging mind and heart sore made return to shallowing shore.
And there Attis, seasick, heart sore, with sore eyes salty as the sea
now addressed her country, grief struck, with this song, or more of a speech:
Oh my country, nation, homeland, oh my country where I was born!
Like a truant out of bounds – bounds like a palace, a place of peace –
in a rage, a grief, a wild mood, did I take myself off to here,
here to live in lairs of wild beasts, here to live in shivering snow,
to inhabit my own madness, my insanity the worst lair
of them all. Oh where can I now understand my country to be?
My sore eyes both long to be fixed in a gaze shiverless on you,
for a pause, a space, to come clear, and to clear what’s left of my mind.
Do I have to leave, to have left, my own home, and live in the wild?
Do I have to give up male friends (though in fact he thought of his girl –
that is, hers – not his, but her girl), give up wrestling, forum and gym?
I am overlaid with such grief, my complaints just echo complaints...
For what kind of human figure can there be that I have not tried?
I have been a girl, a young man, adolescent and all of that,
as a boy I was the best, first of my class, of them all the best,
there were crowds in doorways, throngs, hoards at the threshold, a press of heat,
and my house was crowded, decked out, with the garlands left in the wake
when I came to leave the hot sheets of my bed with the rising sun.
And should I be spoken now as – as a slave of the tambourine,
as a Maened, Cybele’s slave girl, just a part – and a sterile part –
of myself? And should I live (haunt) this terrain clothed only in snow?
Should I spend my life in deep shade, at the base of this mountain range,
with the deer who hide in these woods, with the boar roaming all about?
I regret what I have done, now, what I wish now I hadn’t done!
When these sounds were driven forth, forced from the lips, from those girlish lips
and were carried back in full force to the goddess’s doubled ears
then at once she loosened from all their restraints her two shackled lions,
with a prod, set off the left lion, the most wild and solitary:
Off you go, she cried, my fierce beast! Go and drive him into despair,
with a leap, a pounce, a wild chase, make him flee back in to the woods:
once a taste is taken there is no escape from my sovereignty.
With your tail as whip scourge yourself into madness and madderness,
with a roar let loose from your depths make the whole of the world resound,
with a tossing mane, a wild shake, go and throw yourself into this.
And these words let loose the remains of this song, the most real of all
as the lion its own self itself incited into a rage
and tore off, all speed and tumult, with a crash through the underbrush,
till it came to where the sea foamed, last confectionary of the shore,
and saw Attis gazing out past the entablature of the sea,
and it made its charge. And Attis turned and fled back in to the woods
where she lived, in thrall, without cease, to Cybele the rest of her life.
As for we who stand astonished at this goddess so out of bounds,
as for we for whom, since our births, life consistently disappoints,
we can read, inspired or assailed, this song made by one driven mad.
(109) Holding true
This time our love could be happy, you promise me,
my life, and could last between us forever –
God Almighty, make it possible for her to promise truly
and for us to stake our whole lives on altering not
in our love, but holding true to these terms.
(36) Given how truly
Given how truly you suck, I call on you,
Cicero’s clerk’s Annual Legal Review,
to discharge the vow of my girl
who vowed to the sanctity of Venus
that if I were restored to her love
and called a truce on our war of iambics
she would give to the god of fire
the most epic writings of the worst
of writers, to be burnt by the wood of some
unlucky tree - these epic works
being the poems she saw as the worst
for the sake of her frippery vow.
Now, then, O Goddess born of sea-foam,
with temples in wooded Idalium
and barren Urium, worshipped in Ancona
and reedy Cnidus, in Amathunta and Golgos,
and the sea ports of Illyria where all the best trades
are made, accept this vow as redeemed
according to the contract, if not too inept
in its wit, and without further ado
let’s get you, Cicero’s clerk’s Annual Review,
into the fire, given how truly you suck.
(49) Someone should give thanks to Cicero…
To Cicero, the most prominent case-bringer
of all the descendants of Romulus, all who ever lived
and all who are ever going to live in the future,
the greatest thanks are given by Catullus,
the very worst of all poets,
as much the worst of all poets
as you are the greatest of all lawyers.
(107) Bright light is all I see
If something happens to someone who has loved and longed
without having any hope, that is a gift beyond compare.
And so to me it is a gift more covetable than gold
that you restore yourself, Lesbia, to me, who longed for you,
to me, who longed for you without hope, you offer restitution,
you bring yourself back to us – unfurl the whitest of all
signals! Who alive could be counted happier than I am, who
could hope for a fortune more covetable than this?
These are the poems my Clodia writes back to, or provokes, in the poems collected in I, Clodia
(2) Sparrow
Look at you, Sparrow, playing in the folds of her
clothes, her favourite accessory, kept
right up against her, coaxed out onto her
finger, provoked into a tiny
attack, the way my own incandescent
desire is provoked without having
any pet myself to play with, though I need
that distraction from love’s pain
I believe that she is seeking, a quieting of
the intolerable – if only I could play with you
the way she does, and forget my own suffering!
I would concede each round to you, Sparrow, as happily as
Atalanta welcomed the distraction of an apple in the middle of a race
she wanted only to lose, to give in to love.....
(5) Let us live, and love me
Oh, god, Clodia, let us live, and love me.
Old men talking up scandal, why should we care?
I’d account all the damage at one cent (if
that). If we, like the sun, could rise again when
once we’d set, we could wait an age, or more, but
our brief light having set, our night’s eternal.
Kiss me, one thousand times and then a hundred,
then a thousand times more, a hundred more, then
when we’ve kissed such a multitude of kisses
we confuse our own selves, then no one, even
us, could state what precise amount of kisses
they’re accusing us of, and ... case dismissed!
(7) How many kisses
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…
(3) Pipiabat (used to chirp)
Let revelry cease and charming people pause their charming,
let flights of angels sing him to his rest –
my girl’s sparrow is dead,
the sparrow she loved so much,
the sparrow she cared about more than she cared for her own eyes.
Oh, he was sweet as honey, this little bird,
and was as familiar with her as a little girl with her own mother,
not wanting to fly away
but hopping about her body, and chirping to her
confidentially.
Now, he has embarked on that dark journey
from which no one ever can return,
while I stand here on this fragile shore howling curses
into the underworld, where death takes everything that was beautiful,
bearing even this sparrow away from me –
this miserable sparrow, who has caused the eyes of my girl
to be so red and swollen with weeping.
(51) Like a god
Like a god, he looks like to me, or, I’d say
more than god-like, he who can sit there, mirror-
like, across from where you are sitting. can sit
watching you, hearing
your sweet laugh, your laugh which from me steals my own
senses! From the very first instant, each time
that I see you, Clodia, nothing’s on the
tip of my tongue, stopped
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...
I blame all this poetry, it has brought me
down, it’s all this “being a poet.” I blame
art (not just mine) for all of history – yes,
that whole disaster!
(83) Still talking
Lesbia has nothing good to say about me
in front of her husband,
and he is enough of a fool
to be pleased by this!
Can somebody be so oblivious?
If she had forgotten us, if she could hold her tongue,
I’d know she was over me.
As long as she is still sniping and interrupting
she is not only still remembering
but, what really counts, still burning -
and, what I care about most, still talking.
(8) These extravagances end now (in limping iambs)
Give up, Catullus, these extravagances end now,
what you can see is over, Please. Just. Call. Over.
The sun itself encouraged you back then, shining
on you wherever you were led, your girl cracking
her whip – a girl we loved as no girl has ever
been loved before. Good times were staged those days – days when
you wanted it, and truly she did not not want
it – yes, the sun, it really shone on you those days.
But now, she doesn’t want you. So, then, you also
at last must harden up, stop chasing her, tragic
and whiplashed, but rein in your heart, and stand steadfast.
So goodbye, girl! Catullus is resolved, no more
demands against your will, no more of this chasing –
but what post-despot life is left for you? Now who
will be your supplicant? Who’ll think you beautiful?
And who will you love now? Who’ll call you their girlfriend?
Who will get kissed, whose lips are about to be bitten?
But you, Catullus, hold out till the end of time.
(92) The signs
Lesbia has nothing good to say about me and she says nothing
never but talks non-stop: if she doesn’t love me, I’ll die.
So what are the signs? The same signs I see in me: assiduously
as I put her down, I will die if I can’t love her.
(86) A grain of salt
If being tall, blonde and poised makes Quintia beautiful
I too would have to concede she is beautiful but
she is not beautiful to me. How can I think her beautiful
when she has not a grain of salt in all her insipidity?
I think Lesbia’s beauty has swept up into itself all the beauty
of everyone else so that no one else now, really, can be beautiful.
(79) The favours of a few
Lesbius is pretty fortunate, chosen by Lesbia
over Catullus and all his people, but who
wouldn’t choose such extravagance,
a man who would sell Catullus and all his people
for the favours of a few rising stars?
(70) On wind, on water
There is not one man, she says,
she could love so much
as me, not even if Jupiter himself asked to marry her.
She says.......But what a woman says
to a lover in the heat of passion
should be written
on the wind, on running water
(87) On my part
There is not one woman who could say
she was loved so much
as my own Lesbia was loved by me.
Not in any love compact could anyone be said
to have carried out their fiduciary duty
to the extent to which, on my part, I
can be found to have been true
to you.
(72) Liking less
You used to say there was no one you truly knew but Catullus,
Lesbia, and there was not a god you would hold before me.
I placed you before all others, not just out of desire
but in the way a father might raise up his own sons – or sons-in-law.
Having known you, the more I expend myself in burning for you
the cheaper and more trivial you seem to me.
You want to know why? Because pain such as this
makes me like you less the more that I love you.
(58) More than himself
Caelius, I tell you: Lesbia, our Lesbia, this
Lesbia loved by Catullus more than himself
and more than all he owns, now
in alleyways and at the crossroads
tosses off any citizen of Rome.
(85) I hate and I love
Hating and loving, I make no sense even to my own self –
I can’t explain how I feel! Crucified, that’s how I feel!
(75) So lost in service
I am so reduced by my love for you, Lesbia,
so lost in service to your faults,
that I could not think well of you now
however true you proved yourself to be,
and could not, no matter what you did,
from loving you, desist.
(77) Ruinous
Banking on your friendship, Rufus Caelius, was for me
a bad investment (bad? The cost has been ruinous!) –
allowing you to worm your way in
till now my guts are churning.
It is not the loss of what was good I mind.
Worse, you have withdrawn from me the drug
I lived for, along with the pestilence of our friendship.
(76) Standing fast
If a man can find his happiness in remembrance of his own
integrity, thinking over his own faithfulness
to every contractual promise, with not one violation, ever,
no invocation, in the heat of passion, of the name of a god solely
to deceive a man,
then you’ve set your life ahead up well, Catullus,
thanks to this thankless love.
Because every right thing that could have been said
or done was said and done by you.
All this, undertaken in good faith, was taken as nothing
so why amplify its meaning now
with all this extravagant suffering?
Stand fast, Catullus, be resolute this time
in your retreat
and, with no invocation to any god,
from all this misery, desist.
It is difficult to give up such an enduring love,
but however you like to do it, difficult as it is,
this is what has to be done.
To recover from this sickness you must
take back control of your own self
if you can, and even if you cannot
it has to be done.
Oh, God! If you have any pity in you, or if ever
you have come to the aid of anyone
in mortal extremity, look on me in my misery
and, if I have truly lived by the rules,
rescue me from this fever
that has overcome me,
before it destroys me, utterly!
A drowsy numbness pains my senses,
and my heart aches…
I am not looking now for her to single me out
or even, since that was always too much
to ask, to refrain from loving everyone else –
I can set this sickness aside
and take responsibility for my own health.
Oh, God, all the gods, restore my health to me!
(60) The final entreaty
Was it a lioness from a Libyan mountain
gave birth to you or were you born
from the metal-hearted Scylla, that you
could respond to this
final entreaty, made
in such desperate grief,
with such cruel and finely wrought contempt?
(11) Over and over
Whether he should venture as far as India
where the shore is pounded upon by rough surf
without ceasing once until morning, friends who’d
follow Catullus,
whether it’s the Caspian sea he reaches,
whether soft Arabian sands, or whether
those reclining stretches of land the Nile floods
over and over,
whether he should scale the most lofty Alps, and
gaze on the great monument Caesar won, the
Gallic Rhine, that horrible water, or risk
barbarous Britain,
willing if you’d be to attempt all this, then
might you, maybe working together, and if
all goes smoothly, take to my girl these words, my
last correspondence:
let her live, and fare well with all her lovers
all three hundred wrapped in her arms together
not one of them truthfully loved, but one and all
fucked up forever.
(101) Ave atque vale
Many the cities and many the seas I crossed on my way here.
Here, brother, I come to grieve, and give the funeral rites
with all propriety, this, the last thing I’ll give to my brother
to whose mute ashes I don’t know why I should speak.
I can’t argue with fate, and fate has taken you from me
undeservedly so, wrenched you from out of time’s flow.
Now there is left for us nothing but this, an old-fashioned service,
these sad, dutiful rites, done as instructed to do.
So accept this last tear flooded brother’s bequest
now and forever yours brother hail and fare well.
(65) Utterly shattered
Although I am exhausted, utterly shattered, from
the pain of unrelenting sorrow, Hortalus, and
although I find myself cast completely
adrift, at a complete remove from
any inspiration, my mind
feverish and numb,
unable to produce anything with any life
to it, when my own brother
has only so recently been swept away
out of time’s flow, the waters
of Lethe lapping at his pale foot, now
buried, crushed under Trojan soil,
forever out of sight (never again will
I look upon you, brother, never,
surely, will I cease from loving you, never
will I write anything but elegies
on your death, like a nightingale pouring forth
a grief abroad, singing for every poet
lost for words) – yet, Hortalus, even in all
this grief, still I send you these translations
of Callimachus, so you won’t imagine
I could let your words slip from my mind
and blow away in the storm, just as
a girl might have forgotten
the apple in the folds of her dress
given to her as a pledge
of forbidden love, rolling now
onto the floor as she leaps up
at her mother’s entrance, and startles,
caught out once again, by love betrayed...
(64) Dissolved like words
It began with the pine trees from Mt Pelion
taking to the seas, cresting the waves of Neptune
and coming to rest exactly where the story
of the Argonauts was to commence, those
heroes ready and waiting to take to the seas
to seek the Golden Fleece, sending
across the vast depths of the ocean this
framework of pine woven together
by the goddess of cities....So new a thing
this was to plough the ocean that it raised the Nereids
themselves from its churning depths, their
breasts as new a sight to the men
as the ship to the Nereids. And this was when
Peleus fell instantly in love with Thetis, when Thetis
herself did not turn away from the love
of a mortal man, and when her father himself saw
that the two must be wed.
Oh, this was the time of heroes, a golden age, when
heroes were born of gods, their mothers also
to be praised...
This is what epic poetry is made for, and this
poem is made to sing of Peleus, and the marriage
of Peleus and Thetis,
blazing with torches
circled round by the whole sea
lavished with the attention of the gods,
and freely entered into on both sides.
And so, the marriage day came about
and all of Thessaly filled the palace
to overflowing, a whirling crowd
all swept up into the celebrations,
arraigned in finery,
gifts carried high.
And so, a whole country
is emptied out of its people,
every town deserted,
every farm left behind,
every house closed,
every field untilled,
soft, the necks of the oxen
who would have pulled the ploughs,
uncleared, the vineyard grounds,
unpruned, the trees,
and the tools rusting over where they lie.
All opulence now could be found
in the palace of Peleus
extending hall to hall
further and further
inwards and inwards
extension after extension
accommodating the hoards of gold
the hoards of silver
ivory thrones shining
tables set with every glittering thing
and who wouldn’t take pleasure in all this?
And the true altar at the heart of it all –
the marriage bed, a bed of ivory,
and on the bed, a coverlet,
and on the coverlet, embroidered
scenes from the heroic times
gone by.
Theseus, sailing swiftly away, is here
presented watched by a frenzied Ariadne
unable to believe she is seeing what she sees
when she sees herself, waking up from
what were her dreams, alone
and abandoned on an empty shore.
And he, Theseus, vanishes
into his future, as the promises
he made dissolve like words
written on water, in the middle
of a storm.
And there Ariadne stands
like a marble statue, a marble statue
dropping its headband, hair
flying free, a statue unravelling, drapery
falling open, breasts uncovered, and
the sea at her feet carrying
the fallen garments away
with the tide,
as if she could possibly care
about her clothing when all she has ever, ever
cared about is you!
Love is nothing but pain
and pain is all that loving Theseus
ever could have led to,
Theseus with his mind fixed
on the Minotaur, with ambitious
dreams to save a people, a people who
surely needed saving whatever the cost to Ariadne
who loved Theseus from the moment
she saw him, her innocence at
that instant lost forever, fire running
fiercely through her body, her ears
resounding with their own sound, eyes
lit up with dazzling darkness,
love’s pleasures stirred up
along with love’s torment, but who
could want to feel this way?
Her heart would almost fail her,
she would grow paler than gold
when Theseus braved death
for glory, in the labyrinth
of the Minotaur, from which
his safe return, the Minotaur having fallen
to Theseus like a forest to a storm,
was possible only because of the thread
of Ariadne, unrolled behind him
as she had told him to unroll it
on his way in, there still
where he had left it, a faithful guide
back to the sunlight outside.
But as if lost in a maze I find myself
taking a turning, all this a digression from
the story I was telling, and there is
more yet to tell, of how a girl, flying
from home, leaving the love of
a father, a sibling, a mother
all for the sweetness
of passion, all to dream
for a time of love, found herself waking
and for Theseus already to have forgotten her
disappearing into nothing but sea-foam in the wind...
And now she can only despair and rail and cry out
into the wind-sore skies, high on a mountain
looking out across the nothing seas
at nothing, or wading out
at low tide through sands and sands
as only the wavering water
lifts itself about a raised knee.
Shivering, she cries, “And so, after I abandon
my father, sibling, mother, make enemies
of my friends, you, faithless, leave me,
all promises forgotten, alone, on
an empty shore, as if you think
the gods of old no longer
rule, as if you think it nothing
to cast away all your promises, as if
to unclasp a hand, to leave a knee
bare where once a hand
rested, was nothing, your implacable
heart incapable of pity.
And yet...how sweet you sounded
when you used to let me hope
you wished only to be married to me
and promised me promises
now blown away in the wind.
Let no woman ever listen ever
to the promises a man makes
in the heat of passion,
when anything will be promised,
any oath sworn, and every
promise forgotten like steam
evaporating into nothing.
And I, I would abandon a brother
to be with you when you swore
you would die without me,
for which I should be given up
to wild birds and animals
to tear me apart and leave what’s left
strewn about unmourned, no
funeral rites for me, not
a handful of dirt over my remains
if any remains there may be.
What lioness gave birth to you on
a mountain, what sea spat you forth,
what metal-hearted Scylla, that
you could respond to love,
like this?
Marriage! I’d have settled for
slavery, washing your white
feet, or wasting my life
away embroidering
you some intricate coverlet
for your bed...
But why am I lamenting wildly like this
into the winds which will never
hear me or reply,
when he is tossing and turning
somewhere in the middle of the ocean
and all that seaweed at my feet
is empty of all humanity.
It seems to be my fate
to call out to those who cannot
hear me or respond –
but nothing that happened should
ever have happened! Better
for that journey from the provinces
never to have been made, father
never left, story of the
Minotaur never told,
and no lies listened to
from a faithless lover.
Because where can I escape to,
wherever I should go?
Roiling seas divide me from
the mountains of my homeland,
my father will never receive me after
I abandoned my brother for
a lover, drenched
in my brother’s blood, and
I have no marriage to take refuge
in, when he, the one I loved,
disappears like the wind,
rowing against the current in
full flight.
There is nothing for me
on these empty shores, this empty
island is no home, and yet
there is nowhere to go
and no way out, surrounded
by sea on all sides,
on all sides trapped, with
no escape and no hope
of escape, every thing
I see speaks of nothing but death.
But before death closes down the last
of my vision and takes away all of
my will, ruined as I am, I will
demand at least to be heard
by the gods if not by anyone else
and secure for myself a promise
that my words will be remembered,
that it is Theseus who will suffer from
the anguish I suffer from now, and the
forgetfulness with which he abandoned me
will shadow everything he tries to do from now
and for forever.
And when she spoke the whole world
juddered into a new alignment, the surf-topped
seas trembling and the stars shaking in the skies above.
And Theseus let slip from his mind, as
the storm clouded over it, the last promises
he had held fast until then, and so no gave no sign
of his safety to his sorrowing father
as he sailed, mind adrift, into port, the story
being that his father, when Theseus
was to set sail, would not send him away
with his blessing but in full grieving
with ash rubbed through his hair, and the ship
fitted out with a dirty sail stained red with
rusted iron. But if Theseus should miraculously
succeed and his life be spared, then he was to
remember these commands of his father,
stored in his memory, locked
in his heart, and held safe against the erosure
of time, that as soon as the ship
should be in sight of shore, the rust red sails
must be taken down, and in their place, the white sail
be raised that will signal preparations
should begin for a lifetime of celebration.
This promise Theseus had remembered steadily
until it blew out of his mind the way
clouds will drift off in the wind, so that
his father, gazing out to sea already
exhausted with grief, on seeing
the rust red sails, threw himself from his high
look-out to his death on the rocks below.
And Theseus returned to a home wracked with grief
to feel himself torn apart with the same agonies
of guilt and anguish that he himself
had delivered to Ariadne and which she felt
still as she stood, gazing into the empty
sea, at his always disappearing ship,
while on another part of the coverlet Bacchus
can be seen, seeking Ariadne, aflame
with love, and over here are all the followers
of Bacchus, ranting and wailing and tossing
their heads, beating their tambourines,
singing in galliambic rhythms, blowing
raucous blasts from their horns, a terrible
cacophony, though not worse than
the piping flute...And this is what
was embroidered on the coverlet, gazed
at by all the Thessalian youth on their way
to the drinks table and onwards each
to their own delicious oblivion,
as the palace emptied out and was filled
by the presence of the gods.
Down they came, Chiron from Mt Pelion
with all the flowers of the levelled valleys,
Peneus came from the valleys of Tempe
bringing bay trees, plane trees and poplar,
Prometheus the prophet with fading scars,
and, finally, the father of all the gods
with all his sons, except for those
gods who chose not to honour such
a wedding. Except for those gods, all
were present and shining and easy in the
splendour of the palace.
And then arrived the Fates, with shaking bodies
but prophetic words and their hands
never at rest but working always
at their weaving, the left hand holding
the distaff of wool, the right hand
drawing out the wool, and their teeth
breaking off threads to make the work even.
With little bits of wool caught
between their teeth, and drifts of wool
at their feet, they sang:
Hear now this prophesy, given to you on this day of all days:
Strong as your leadership is, in time it shall be not you but
such a son that his name will resound through the far halls of time -
so the weaving runs on,
and the threads draw together.
No house has ever yet harboured a love that is greater than your love,
Never the pact of fidelity that will be honoured as yours will,
Thetis and Peleus, now and forever bonded together –
and the weaving runs on,
and the threads draw together.
Fearless will be the son to be born to you, famous Achilles,
Known to his enemies not by his back but face to face, always,
Fearless and fleet he will prove to be, striking like lightning in battle –
so the weaving runs on,
and the threads draw together.
Never a warrior ever will be to compare with him
Driven by grief and by rage as the blood of the Trojans
Runs in the fields in the last days of Troy’s proud history –
and the weaving runs on,
and the threads draw together.
After the brilliant deeds of this fearless warrior
Mothers will tear at their hair and beat at their breasts
Grieving the children they see for the last time to bury them,
so the weaving runs on,
and the threads draw together.
As when a reaper should take too early the still forming wheat ears
Never to ripen in full summer sunshine, so will the iron-red
Trojan battlefields after the fighting be strewn with young bodies -
and the weaving runs on,
and the threads draw together.
Testament to his heroicism will be the wave of Scamander
Pouring itself into swift-flowing Hellespont choking its current
Clogged up with corpses, the streams running warm from the bloodshed –
so the weaving runs on,
and the threads draw together.
Testament finally to his great valour comes after his death
Death being meted out also to honour him with a girl’s body
Gilding his burial mound with her golden young limbs –
and the weaving runs on,
and the threads draw together.
This was the way that the Greeks in their victory relished their fortune,
As, on the edge of a meadow, a passing plow might cut down a flower,
So was Polyxena, silently bowing her head, cut down –
so the weaving runs on,
and the threads draw together.
Therefore why hesitate to bring about this marriage all favoured,
Now let the husband receive with due eagerness his willing bride,
Now let the bride be bestowed on a husband still swept up in passion –
and the weaving runs on,
and the threads draw together.
When the girl’s nurse will return in the morning no longer will she
Circle her neck with yesterday’s ribbon, nor yet will her mother
Worry about her sleeping alone in a barren marriage –
so the weaving runs on,
and the threads draw together.
Such were the prophecies given by the Fates
to Peleus, in a time before ours
when the gods still visited the homes
of heroes, setting themselves before us in
dazzling display. Often the father of all gods
would light up his temple,
returning to look on at the sacrifices
made in his name, often from
the highest peak of Parnassus the roaring
Thyiades came following
Liber as everyone stoked the fires
of his altars all through the cities, often
in times of war one god or another
would intervene pulling
the strings of fate one way or
another. But how could they return
now when all of humanity
has become so unspeakably awful,
brothers with hands steeped in
fraternal blood, parents ungrieved for,
fathers waiting for the deaths of
their first-borns to take for themselves
their sons’ wives in marriage, a mother
sleeping with a son with no thought
of how she dishonouors the gods
of her household? Entangled in such
unspeakable crimes as we are, how could
the gods do other than turn away
from the sight of us?
These are not days in which gods might appear to us,
these are days the gods hide from the light of.
(63) Attis at large
And so Attis, seasick, heart sore, having left so terribly fast,
with a pause, a leap, a landing, galliambically arrived
in the shady regions, wood-clothed, in the goddessy depths of dark
in a rage, a grief, a wild mood, having come so terribly far,
and himself, still him, he tore off, with a flint, all his manly parts –
so that she (now she) when she saw she was all a a a a girl,
even while still bleeding fresh blood, a new stain on that shagpile earth,
in a flash, a leap, with no pause, she took up here a tambourine –
tambourine of yours, your symbol, sign of Cybele’s syllables –
with a clash, a strike, a ringing, her soft fingers on the stretched skin,
she began to sing this whole song, in a tremble to, to the throng:
All of us, not cis, but sisters – with a leap of nothing but faith
let’s take off, let’s rush, let’s stampede, like a herd on the, the, the loose –
you are lost, you’re all in exile, with a past you have left behind
you have only me, your one hope, here to lead, if you’ll follow me,
after all that we have been through, salty seas of masculinity
we will sail no more, no, not we – let us now be all spiritual,
that’s to say, let’s sing, and sing loud, with a clash of the tambourine
and with tossing heads and wild leaps, we must throw ourselves into this,
as if in to fire, with no fear – a religious sort of penance!
And in need of no persuading, the stampede, if it was that, starts –
all of them, not cis, but sisters, taking off with a lightness of heart
like a sisterhood, a herd loosed, with a clash of the tambourine.
And so Attis, no true woman, was swept along with the rest,
in the lead, but led, herself led, the clash of the tambourine
a resounding beat in her head, fa-la-LA, la la la la LA,
like a heifer still unbroken, a disorder of flailing flight.
And the sisterhood, a herd loose, kept the beat of the tambourine.
And the sisters, having found peace, could all sleep when the ringing ceased,
having come so far, so hard won, they were restless no more but at peace,
after all that they had been through, having come so terribly far.
Yes but when the sun with eyes bright looked out at the whole airy sky,
and the whole expanse of hard earth, and the whole wilderness of sea,
yes and when the sunlight drove forth all the shadows of the long night,
and when sleep itself was sent off, or took flight, as Attis awoke,
well then sleep, not Attis, found rest; it was sleep that would rest at last.
Not so Attis, sleep departed, and his madness departed too,
not so Attis, who reviewed all he had done, and all in his heart,
and could see the lie it had been, and see all that the lie had cost,
and with surging mind and heart sore made return to shallowing shore.
And there Attis, seasick, heart sore, with sore eyes salty as the sea
now addressed her country, grief struck, with this song, or more of a speech:
Oh my country, nation, homeland, oh my country where I was born!
Like a truant out of bounds – bounds like a palace, a place of peace –
in a rage, a grief, a wild mood, did I take myself off to here,
here to live in lairs of wild beasts, here to live in shivering snow,
to inhabit my own madness, my insanity the worst lair
of them all. Oh where can I now understand my country to be?
My sore eyes both long to be fixed in a gaze shiverless on you,
for a pause, a space, to come clear, and to clear what’s left of my mind.
Do I have to leave, to have left, my own home, and live in the wild?
Do I have to give up male friends (though in fact he thought of his girl –
that is, hers – not his, but her girl), give up wrestling, forum and gym?
I am overlaid with such grief, my complaints just echo complaints...
For what kind of human figure can there be that I have not tried?
I have been a girl, a young man, adolescent and all of that,
as a boy I was the best, first of my class, of them all the best,
there were crowds in doorways, throngs, hoards at the threshold, a press of heat,
and my house was crowded, decked out, with the garlands left in the wake
when I came to leave the hot sheets of my bed with the rising sun.
And should I be spoken now as – as a slave of the tambourine,
as a Maened, Cybele’s slave girl, just a part – and a sterile part –
of myself? And should I live (haunt) this terrain clothed only in snow?
Should I spend my life in deep shade, at the base of this mountain range,
with the deer who hide in these woods, with the boar roaming all about?
I regret what I have done, now, what I wish now I hadn’t done!
When these sounds were driven forth, forced from the lips, from those girlish lips
and were carried back in full force to the goddess’s doubled ears
then at once she loosened from all their restraints her two shackled lions,
with a prod, set off the left lion, the most wild and solitary:
Off you go, she cried, my fierce beast! Go and drive him into despair,
with a leap, a pounce, a wild chase, make him flee back in to the woods:
once a taste is taken there is no escape from my sovereignty.
With your tail as whip scourge yourself into madness and madderness,
with a roar let loose from your depths make the whole of the world resound,
with a tossing mane, a wild shake, go and throw yourself into this.
And these words let loose the remains of this song, the most real of all
as the lion its own self itself incited into a rage
and tore off, all speed and tumult, with a crash through the underbrush,
till it came to where the sea foamed, last confectionary of the shore,
and saw Attis gazing out past the entablature of the sea,
and it made its charge. And Attis turned and fled back in to the woods
where she lived, in thrall, without cease, to Cybele the rest of her life.
As for we who stand astonished at this goddess so out of bounds,
as for we for whom, since our births, life consistently disappoints,
we can read, inspired or assailed, this song made by one driven mad.
(109) Holding true
This time our love could be happy, you promise me,
my life, and could last between us forever –
God Almighty, make it possible for her to promise truly
and for us to stake our whole lives on altering not
in our love, but holding true to these terms.
(36) Given how truly
Given how truly you suck, I call on you,
Cicero’s clerk’s Annual Legal Review,
to discharge the vow of my girl
who vowed to the sanctity of Venus
that if I were restored to her love
and called a truce on our war of iambics
she would give to the god of fire
the most epic writings of the worst
of writers, to be burnt by the wood of some
unlucky tree - these epic works
being the poems she saw as the worst
for the sake of her frippery vow.
Now, then, O Goddess born of sea-foam,
with temples in wooded Idalium
and barren Urium, worshipped in Ancona
and reedy Cnidus, in Amathunta and Golgos,
and the sea ports of Illyria where all the best trades
are made, accept this vow as redeemed
according to the contract, if not too inept
in its wit, and without further ado
let’s get you, Cicero’s clerk’s Annual Review,
into the fire, given how truly you suck.
(49) Someone should give thanks to Cicero…
To Cicero, the most prominent case-bringer
of all the descendants of Romulus, all who ever lived
and all who are ever going to live in the future,
the greatest thanks are given by Catullus,
the very worst of all poets,
as much the worst of all poets
as you are the greatest of all lawyers.
(107) Bright light is all I see
If something happens to someone who has loved and longed
without having any hope, that is a gift beyond compare.
And so to me it is a gift more covetable than gold
that you restore yourself, Lesbia, to me, who longed for you,
to me, who longed for you without hope, you offer restitution,
you bring yourself back to us – unfurl the whitest of all
signals! Who alive could be counted happier than I am, who
could hope for a fortune more covetable than this?
