Give me a thousand kisses.
I will not feel them.
Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred, then another thousand, then a second hundred.
I will not feel them.
Old men and their centuries of crooning lend me nothing.
My heart is still, my night endless,
my thirst eternal.
Images of rivers, lakes, oceans
quench my thirst like nothing else,
yet drinking is ever the more repulsive.
The brief light has set.
da mi basia mille.
I will not feel them.

What wicked intent, wretched little Ravidus,
casts you headlong into my iambics?
Which god, ill-invoked by you, readies to stir up a crazed fray?
Or was it so that you can become the subject in popular chatter?
What do you want? Is it pleasing to be famous in whatever way you desire?
You will be, since you determined to covet my loves, along with eternal retributions.

I would like, papyrus, that you tell the young love poet,
my friend, Caecilius, that he should come to Verona,
leaving behind the walls of New Como and the shore of Larius:
for I wish that he receives certain cogitations
of a friend of his and mine.
On which account, if he will be wise, he will devour the road,
although a glittering girl might call him back a thousand times as he is leaving,
and, flinging both arms around his neck,
she might beg that he delay,
who now, if true things are announced to me,
perishes through uncontrollable love of him:
for from which time she reads his incomplete "Mistress of Dindymus,"
from that time, flames consume the innermost marrow of the poor girl.
I forgive you, girl more learned than the Sapphic Muse;
for the "Great Mother" of Caecilius is elegantly incomplete.

You shall dine well, Fabullus, at my house
in a few days, if the gods favour you,
if you will have brought with you a good and large dinner,
not without a shining girl
and wine and wit and all your laughter.
If you will have brought these things, I say, our charming one,
you shall dine well: for the purse of your Catullus is full of cobwebs.
But, in turn, you will receive undiluted loves
of anything which is either more delightful or more elegant:
for I will give to you perfume,
which the Venuses and Cupids gave to my girl,
which, when you will smell it,
you will ask the gods so that they might
make all of you, Fabullus, a nose.

He seems to me to be like a god;
he, if it is lawful to surpass the gods,
who, sitting opposite, gazes at you repeatedly,
and listens to you, laughing sweetly,
which snatches away all senses from miserable me;
for as soon as I beheld you, Lesbia, nothing is left to me of my voice in my throat.

But my tongue is numb,
a subtle flame runs down beneath my limbs,
my ears ring with their own sound,
my eyes are covered with twin night.

Leisure, Catullus, is burdensome to you:
in leisure you exult too much, and you run riot.
Leisure first ruined both rulers and prosperous cities.

Sparrow, delight of my girl,
with whom she is accustomed to play,
whom she is accustomed to hold in the fold of her dress,
for whom, seeking rapaciously, she is accustomed to give her fingertip and to urge sharp bites,
when it is pleasing for me to make some loving joke for my shining desire,
and a solace of her sorrow,
I believe, so that her so heavy passion may grow quiet.
If only I were able to play with you yourself,
and to lift the doleful woes of your soul!

It is as pleasing to me as they say that the golden apple was to the swift girl,
which unbound her girdle, having been fastened for a long time.

Oh, foolish Catullus – have you not heard?
Your lover Lesbia gave you the bird!

Through many lands and many seas
I come in mourning, brother
To finally bring and finally lay
My gift upon your grave,
And yet I know that gifts won't change
In any way your ashes.
What foul and stupid luck it is
That takes away a brother
And leaves instead this awful rage
And nothing else for me!
But still I'll place this funeral gift
Like gifts we gave our parents.
So take it now, my gift to you,
With tears I cannot quell.
And also keep forever true
My soul and my farewell.