"catullus" poems
Translation From Catullus.
Equal to Jove that youth must be—
Greater than Jove he seems to me—
Who, free from Jealousy’s alarms,
Securely views thy matchless charms;
That cheek, which ever dimpling glows,
That mouth, from whence such music flows,
To him, alike, are always known,
Reserv’d for him, and him alone.
Ah! Lesbia! though ’tis death to me,
I cannot choose but look on thee;
But, at the sight, my senses fly,
I needs must gaze, but, gazing, die;
Whilst trembling with a thousand fears,
Parch’d to the throat my tongue adheres,
My pulse beats quick, my breath heaves short,
My limbs deny their slight support;
Cold dews my pallid face o’erspread,
With deadly languor droops my head,
My ears with tingling echoes ring,
And Life itself is on the wing;
My eyes refuse the cheering light,
Their orbs are veil’d in starless night:
Such pangs my nature sinks beneath,
And feels a temporary death.
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... So, praise the gods, Catullus is away!
And let me tend you this advice, my dear:
Take any lover that you will, or may,
Except a poet. All of them are queer.
It's just the same -- a quarrel or a kiss
Is but a tune to play upon his pipe.
He's always hymning that or wailing this;
Myself, I much prefer the business type.
That thing he wrote, the time the sparrow died --
(Oh, most unpleasant -- gloomy, tedious words!)
I called it sweet, and made believe I cried;
The stupid fool! I've always hated birds ...
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Bald heads, forgetful of their sins,
Old, learned, respectable bald heads
Edit and annotate the lines
That young men, tossing on their beds,
Rhymed out in love's despair
To flatter beauty's ignorant ear.
All shuffle there, all cough in ink;
All wear the carpet with their shoes;
All think what other people think;
All know the man their neighbour knows.
Lord, what would they say
Did their Catullus walk their way?
2.5k
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.
Mar 23, 2015
Mar 23, 2015 at 9:25 AM UTC
09/09/10 13.26
Just eaten the last of your figs x
End
There is just so much to know about the fig.
Andre Gidé, D.H.Lawrence,
Gabriela Mistral
Poets all
Have tried
To decode
Its secret enclosed form.
*Since nothing escapes
the smell becomes succulence and taste.
A blossom without beauty, yet a fruit of delights...*
A year ago
When I brought autumn to your table
I tried to explain
The fig’s ****** nature . . .
and failed.
I was too shy
And mumbled something about
Its gynaecological aspect.
Now I know you better
And your hand has cupped
My testicles
Can you not
Appreciate the similarity?
The size and shape is
. . . similar
It seems male
This secretive fruit
But when you come to know it better,
You’ll agree with Catullus,
It is female.
Oh fig, fruit of female mystery where everything happens invisible flowering and fertilization,and fruiting in the inwardsness of your you that eye will never see till its finished and you’re over-ripe and you burst to give up your ghost.
Yesterday
(After we had eaten figs
From the blue bowl
Bathing in the golden light
Of your September garden)
I felt that ripe and secret cleft
Open to my ***** touch
And kiss and kiss
Kiss and kiss
Touch me: it is softness of good satin, and when you open me, what an unexpected rose! Poets have not known the colour of night, nor the figs of Palestine. We are both the most ancient blue, a passionate blue, richly concentrating itself because of its ardor. I spill my pressed flowers into your hand. I create a deaf meadow for your pleasure. I shower you with the meadow's bouquet until covering your feet.
Feb 10, 2013
Feb 10, 2013 at 2:34 AM UTC
Translation From Catullus
Ye Cupids, droop each little head,
Nor let your wings with joy be spread,
My Lesbia’s favourite bird is dead,
Whom dearer than her eyes she lov’d:
For he was gentle, and so true,
Obedient to her call he flew,
No fear, no wild alarm he knew,
But lightly o’er her ***** mov’d:
And softly fluttering here and there,
He never sought to cleave the air,
He chirrup’d oft, and, free from care,
Tun’d to her ear his grateful strain.
Now having pass’d the gloomy bourn,
From whence he never can return,
His death, and Lesbia’s grief I mourn,
Who sighs, alas! but sighs in vain.
Oh! curst be thou, devouring grave!
Whose jaws eternal victims crave,
From whom no earthly power can save,
For thou hast ta’en the bird away:
From thee my Lesbia’s eyes o’erflow,
Her swollen cheeks with weeping glow;
Thou art the cause of all her woe,
Receptacle of life’s decay.
1.9k
Tell me not what too well I know
About the bard of Sirmio.
Yes, in Thalia's son
Such stains there are--as when a Grace
Sprinkles another's laughing face
With nectar, and runs on.
1.6k
Oh! might I kiss those eyes of fire,
A million scarce would quench desire;
Still would I steep my lips in bliss,
And dwell an age on every kiss;
Nor then my soul should sated be,
Still would I kiss and cling to thee:
Nought should my kiss from thine dissever,
Still would we kiss and kiss for ever;
E’en though the numbers did exceed
The yellow harvest’s countless seed;
To part would be a vain endeavour:
Could I desist?—ah! never—never.
1.4k
He trod the earth but yesterday,
And now he treads the stars.
He left us in the April time
He praised so often in his rhyme,
He left the singing and the lyre and went his way.
He drew new music from our tongue,
A music subtly wrought,
And moulded words to his desire,
As wind doth mould a wave of fire;
From strangely fashioned harps slow golden tones he wrung.
I think the singing understands
That he who sang is still,
And Iseult cries that he is dead,—
Does not Dolores bow her head
And Fragoletta weep and wring her little hands?
New singing now the singer hears
To lyre and lute and harp;
Catullus waits to welcome him,
And thro’ the twilight sweet and dim,
Sappho’s forgotten songs are falling on his ears.
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If we had never done the deed
and soiled the sheets together,
Lesbia we might have had
a love that lasts forever.
Instead, you lay back, wantonly,
inviting me to sin.
Our cries and whispers mingled
as I spent myself within.
Lust comes with an expiration date
and I was cast aside;
Some other noble Roman
now mounts my favorite ride.
Caesar too, will come and go ;
Veni, Vidi, Vici.
Some label you promiscuous
your morals are thought dicey.
Yet you're not indiscriminate
in choosing your next partner;
The distinction is that you lie down
and do not stoop to conquer.
Aug 4, 2012
Aug 4, 2012 at 8:01 AM UTC
at non effugies meos iambos
If I were to wipe away the constellations from the sky,
You alone would shine,
There in that,
Devoid of all the light,
Which too often clutters
Your radiance and your mind.
And lightheartedly I say this,
While scrawling desires on yellowing pages,
Which I hand out at random
(et ad absurdum).
And throwing little glances,
Lost in endless distance
Or translation.
There is a grand complexity to sight and sound
Which I with my inherent limitations
Fail to grasp.
Depictions wrought by my hands
Could never do the forms of these things
Proper justice.
And instead of facsimile
They become ruined.
And so I blur the lines
Between the real and perceived
As done with paltry sketches,
When the artist has no more good to do,
And so becomes not a bearer of beauty
But a butcher.
I write dis
Jointed poesy
With you in mind.
(No better subject could I find.)
And fill the lines,
And fatten the meter out
With syllables and sibyls
With diacritical marks and dieresis
And critical remarks
By means of
Playing knucklebones with words.
But I’m no Anacreon,
Or Tibullus,
Or Sappho.
And though I may be just a boy reading Catullus,
Anachronistically,
My poems are just as good
Had I been
A wordsmith
Like Wordsworth.
(at non effugies meos iambos)
Jul 19, 2016
Jul 19, 2016 at 11:08 AM UTC
A Poet named Catullus
and Lesbia, his muse,
lived in a time of Civil War
when loyalties are confused.
Their field of battle was their bed
where Love and lust contend.
That place where all their passion
petered out and found an end.
It would seem Hades hath no fury
like a Latin poet scorned.
His Lesbia he would abuse
in prose, in Rhyme and song.
Where once he praised her beauty
and swore they'd never part,
he now condemns her deviousness
and damns her cheating heart.
The more things change
they stay the same
when Love decays to hate
They, who once coiled in adulterous sheets,
now despise each others name.
Dec 12, 2013
Dec 12, 2013 at 7:09 AM UTC
I am Bic Pentameter
Bic Pentameter is my name
Rhythm is my business
Time management is my game
Short, Long & Sons employ me
To tidy up their verse
The satirists are not too bad
But Catullus is a curse
I have danced with Sappho
Brought Shakespeare home for tea
Swapped pretty tales with Byron
Bounced da Padova on my knee
Marlowe picked a fight for nought
Auden spiked my drink
Wordsworth was insomnolent
He never slept a wink
Yeats, now there's an anecdote
Worthy of the press
The critic's choice by all accounts
The brightest and the best
But listen to me prattling on
To my work I must attend
Performance, prosody, poesy
The rules of scansion do not bend
For metre is all important
When reciting off by heart
The classic works of yesteryear
And I shall play my part
Jan 2, 2019
Jan 2, 2019 at 7:06 PM UTC
Sweet Lesbia, hold me in your arms,
give me kisses without ceasing.
Your husband fights in Caesar's cause
and is no challenge in deceiving.
Your smooth white shoulders,beautiful,
that never see the Sun.
They are a feast for this poets' eyes
when your stola comes undone.
Beneath your tunica intima
are sweet ******* that fed your child.
I hope you'll bare them to my lips
in just a little while.
The shadows of the autumn Sun
creep clear across the room.
but Lesbia's sweet smile is enough
to brighten up the gloom.
Great Pompey has been put to rout,
Caesar claims the curule chair.
Outside the World has gone to Hades
Not that this poet cares.
For Lesbia is world enough
to treasure and explore.
If more were of my frame of mind
what need had men for war?
Jul 12, 2012
Jul 12, 2012 at 8:39 PM UTC
Just as quickly Catullus met
his fantasy and despaired,
and a thousand-hundred kisses
became irredeemable.
The fool fell for the folly
of a sparrow; Taibhsear
fell from the wisdom of a
raven.
Jul 7, 2013
Jul 7, 2013 at 9:39 AM UTC
what does never
(pull away pull away)
I'm capable of pulling a Plath or two
no I Really don't want to have dinner for one
i'll take seats for two please regardless of if anyone ever if ever shows up if shows up i ever as I ever was
lonely very very lonely right
here
yes please waitress I'll take a beer no wait a Coke please
while i wait here like an Echo waiting to be repeated who is this
why are you here (dance on and on to whatever song beautiful truly beautiful)
i'll be 20-something before time catches up to realize my words
the publication of dreams may become a reality and suddenly like a flash of thunder i become a white light
help me spread some sunshine because god knows that is why i sit here lonely
very very lonely
last night i had a dream about a truck and a gun
and i saw your beautiful face from far away and I wanted to rub it and hold you and love you forever and ever(i could never see you withanyoneelse)
i controlled batteries with my mind and charged the moon in the night
and I didn't ever want to die and there was a whisper and a shadow and a gun who killed the driver
and mine didn't work so i took the wheel sealed the deal and crashed it
due to the whisper
through that i was bathed into immortality reincarnation of flames
then i woke up lying next to you on a sunny day in the grass and Nature smiled
you were smiling and i was smiling 'ahhhhhh i have been reborn' i screamed in joy
and i drowned in her kiss and i was alive when i awoke i was all alive
but the day was the Ruin and all i wanted to do was see her
all day i could not find time to talk to engage
(lonely very very-
wandering around i felt nothing not nothing but something is nothing and nothing is something
at the holy water at the end of the day i saw her wanting to approach her
but i could not turning around like a spiraling out Fibbonaci
very lonely
i think i'm five years from now
sitting here table for one wishing for two
dearest Catullus you must have missed your brother so much
I'll pull a Plath if I have to
May 2, 2013
May 2, 2013 at 7:34 PM UTC
I love words.
They shape, form,
define, refine, divine
reality.
Nothing’s real until the word exists.
Catullus and his rage and his lust
Disintegrate into dust
But for his words.
His passion lives.
Hippocrates and Jesus
Byron and Einstein
Survive, revive, alive
Because of their words.
Words endure.
What is love if you cannot speak it?
So save your affections….
Instead, give me the words.
And when the emotion is long gone,
I will still have your words.
Even without you.
Words are forever.
Jul 6, 2012
Jul 6, 2012 at 10:15 AM UTC
Carried through many a foreign land and much-unknown people,
I arrive to these mis’rable funeral motions
Only so I may present you with this final death-gift
Vainly addressing your ash which cannot ever respond
Fortune having stolen your flesh from my desperate* fingers.
Piteous brother, now ripped from my life like a thread,
Gifts of our love and our sadness hand we down to your gravestone
As is always done for our* dead when they fall.
Take them from us now, my young-dead brother now fallen;
Hear me when I say, “Hail and good-bye for all time.”
May 1, 2012
May 1, 2012 at 4:12 AM UTC
Wretched Catulle, stop the stupid folly
And learn lost what you see is gone,
Aflame were once for you white suns
When you used to go where the girl invited
– Beloved by me as shall again be none -
Herself, with whom were many joys embodied
Which you did lust for, nor did she refuse,
Aflame for sure for you white suns!
Now she says no; what else but follow suit?
Nor chase what runs from you, nor live a wretch,
But make your mind be stubborn, strong, and stick it out!
Goodbye the girl! Catullus still shall stick it out!
Nor will he ask for you nor say your name unasked,
You will be sorry when no-one says your name.
Go, **** What life have you got left?
Who now will come to you? Who see your beauty?
Who will you now love? Whose will you be?
Your kiss of passion whose? The bitten lip?
But you, Catulle, your future’s coming! Stick it out!
Sep 18, 2014
Sep 18, 2014 at 7:07 AM UTC
call me a wimp and you will be a wreck
you stupid lad who tells tales out of school
just say the word i'll break your ******* neck
you seemed to think that nobody would check
the things you said that everything was cool
call me a wimp and you will be a wreck
you'll be destroyed naught left no single speck
and all they'll note is you were one more tool
just say the word i'll break your ******* neck
don't think i won't don't think i give a heck
for who you are or all the lies you drool
call me a wimp and you will be a wreck
so now you're silent now you hit the deck
full up with fear you've figured out the rule
just say the word i'll break your ******* neck
you have to understand that not a fleck
of pity will you get since you're the fool
call me a wimp and you will be a wreck
just say the word i'll break your ******* neck
Mar 19, 2013
Mar 19, 2013 at 8:14 PM UTC
I’ll love my sweetest Ipsitilla
My delish, my pretty hare!
Tell me to come to you round about lunchtime.
And if you command it, I’m there at your bidding.
Let none bar the house’s doorstep
And make not your pleasure then to go out,
But stay at home, ready for us
To do it nine times in one long ****
Alright, if you ask, I’ll obey on the spot:
Once having dined, I’ll flop supine
Poking out of my tunic as well as my cloak.
Sep 13, 2014
Sep 13, 2014 at 6:34 AM UTC
Oh, foolish Catullus – have you not heard?
Your lover Lesbia gave you the bird!
Oct 9, 2018
Oct 9, 2018 at 4:10 PM UTC
"...MALUM HUNC..."
O unknown insect
reading Catullus
along with me this
overheated day
basking in a threatened
Brexit and Boris.
You read with all your many legs
your blue striped body like a cursor
cursing that "...supercilious
superfluous figure."
Yes old Catullus
has the measure of him
Read faster little one!
We need to turn a page
where we find ourselves indeed
in that "far island of the west."
And even after all these years
since Caesar's first invasion
we still breed
this "multifucking tool."
The insect lingers long
on this phrase.
"Why patronise him,damit?
Except to gobble up
fat private
fortunes!"
My cursor
takes to the skies
tired of such
a human and his lies.
"Malum hunc" it observes
with a whir of wings.
Both insect and Catullus
in agreement despite
the missing
centuries.
Meanwhile the rough beast
slouches towards
( God help us!)
No. 10 to be PM.
Jun 29, 2019
Jun 29, 2019 at 3:48 PM UTC
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.
Mar 9, 2019
Mar 9, 2019 at 7:49 PM UTC