the scrappy classicist

Catullus, c. 1

Who’s a new exclusive pocket poet book

for, pages just cut clean with gritty pumice?

Cornelius, for you. For you were used to

think my scribbles to be something. Long since

was when you of the Ancestrals alone risked

setting out all of history in three scrolls,

genius stuff, my god, and full of industry.

This is the why. Keep this tiny makeshift of

a book such as it is for you which, o Muse

who watches out for me, may abide more than

one single generation, enduringly.

Catullus, c. 2

Sparrow, little bauble of my babe, who she

plays with, who she holds in her lap, who she holds

out her fingertip for, the greedy guy, and

stokes stinging bites: The daily round, when she,

my shimmering desire is in the mood for

some precious amusement, and comfort because

she hurts, I believe, to ease the heavy fire:

Could I play with you just like she can herself

and lighten the gloom and doom shop of my heart.

 

So gratifying is it for me as they

say the girl fleet of feet found the gold apple

that unfastened her corset laced up so long.

Catullus, c. 3

Mourn, oh Venuses, oh Cupids too and all

the smarter set kind of men. The sparrow’s dead,

my babe’s, the sparrow, my babe’s little bauble,

whom she, more than her own eyes, she was loving.

For honey sweet he was and knew his very own

as well as a girl knows her very mother,

nor was he betaking himself from her lap 

but hopping around — now he’s here, now he’s there —

to his woman only nonstop went the peeps.

He now is a-going on that shadow-steeped

road from where they deny anyone come back.

But curses to you, evil shades of Orcus

you who gobble down everything beautiful.

So gorgeous a sparrow you have swept away

from me. O dastardly deed! O poor sparrow!

Now courtesy of your exploits my babe’s eyes

are small puffy balls shot with red from weeping.

Catullus, c. 4

That beanpod boat which you behold, my guests, says it

was of ships the most swift, and the thrust of any

floating timber could not overtake it, whether

the moment's demands would call for its little oars

to fly or for its sail. And this the boat says no

the menacing Adriatic’s shore does not say,

or the isles of the Cyclades and renowned Rhodes,

and the uncouth Thracian Sea of Marmora, or

the pitiless bay of the Black Sea, where that one,

later on the beanpod boat, had beforetimes been

a leafy forest; for upon Kidros Dağ’s ridge

often whispers it emitted, leaves a-chatter.

Asmasra on the Black Sea and Kidros’ boxwood,

to you these things have been and are the most noted

says the beanpod boat: from the beginning farthest

ago, it says it stood upon your peak, it dipped

its pint-sized oars in your waters, and from then on

over so many uncorraled seas it carried

its owner, whether a breeze called to the left side

or the right, or onto either sheet Jupiter

had landed simultaneously with godspeed;

and not any prayers to the gods minding the shores

were made by the boat, when it was making its way

from the sea the most remote right up to this lake

clear like glass. But these have been matters of times past.

Now stored fast in rest and peace it’s old and devotes

itself to you, twin Castor and twin Castor’s twin.

Catullus, c. 5

Let us live my Lesbia and let us love

and what the harsher old men say,

say it’s worth one cent. Suns can set

and come back. When once for us 

this little light goes out, one night

everlasting has to be slept.

Give me a thousand kisses then

a hundred then one thousand more

then a second hundred then 

right away one more thousand then 

a hundred then when we’ve made 

many thousands we will cast

things to chaos so we may not know

or so no evil soul gets jealous

when he knows the sum kiss total.

 

Catullus, c. 6

Flavius, to tell Catullus your fantasies 

you’d be willing were they not gross and not rude, 

nor could you shut up. But you have a yen for 

some wasted away binch. It’s embarrassing

to admit. For you lie during widowed nights,

your bed shouts out, silent posturings, reeking

of garlands and Syrian oils, the pillow

and the poufs on this and that part all beat up,

the shuddering bed gets creaking and paces,

splinters. For nothing works to keep under wraps

your mishaps. Why? You would not be splaying wide

your so fucked out pecs  if it’s not the case you are 

be up to some dumbass thing. Accordingly,

whatever you’ve got that’s good or bad, tell us.

I’m willing to broadcast you and your main squeeze

to the sky in an exquisite cut of verse.

Catullus, c. 7

You ask how many of my kissings are for 

you, Lesbia, enough and superfluous. 

As great as the sum of sand in Libya

lies in asafoeetidafull Cyrene

between the oracle of heatwave-steeped Jove

and archaic Battus' holy sepulcher;

or as many are the stars when night shuts up,

seeing the sneaky love affairs of menfolk:

You kissing so many kisses is enough

and beyond for delirium Catullus,

kisses of the kind nosey trolls can't tally,

and evil tongues can't mouth the witch words over.

Catullus, c. 8

Poor you Catullus, stop it

being an idiot and what is

dead and done, consider 

dead and done. Once suns

shone hot white for you when 

you kept coming where your girl 

led. Her. Loved by us so much

will no one be. There and then 

when it was all good times,

what you wanted and your girl 

didn’t, truly suns shone white hot 

for you.And now she doesn’t want,

Don’t you be impotent or follow

something that’s run away,

or keep living pathetically

but make your mind resolute,

hang on, tough it out. 

Good bye, girl. Now Catullus

is toughing it out, he won’t

be seeking after you or asking

you who could care less.

You’re trouble, woe to you,

what does life hold for you?

Who will now come near you?

To whom will you’ve looks to kill?

Who will you love now, who will 

you be said to belong to, who 

will you kiss and you’ll bite

whose lips? But you, Catullus,

your resolve set, keep going.

 

——

Poor Catullus, stop being a dumbass

and take what you see has died be dead. 

At some point burning white suns bleed for you,

when you were coming where your girl was taking 

love by us as much as no woman will be lived.

Then when those times of joy were reality,

which you were wanting and the babe was not wanting,

true fact, burning white suns bleed for you.

Now already that one refuses: you too stop being powerless,

don't follow what runs away, don't live pathetically,

but firm up your brain, endure, be strong.

Good bye, girl. Now Catullus toughens up,

he won't be running after you and will not ask for you

saying no

but you will hurt, when you will not be propositioned.

Bitch, alas for you, what kind of life waits for you>

Who now will set u to you? To whom will you look pretty?

Whom will you now love? Whose will you be labeled?

Whom will you will kiss Whose baby lip will you nip?

But you, Catullus, make a stand. Tough.

 

Catullus, c. 9

Veranius, out of all of my buddies

preeminent to my mind by three hundred

thousand, have you come home to your kitchen gods

and like-minded brothers and aging mother?

You have come. O tidings good fortuned to me!

I shall go and see you intact and I'll hear

you talking about Spanish geography,

happenings, people as you do and drawing

your neck in for a pleasant hug and kisses

I will kiss you. O how many more good-starred

men are, what's more happy or good omened than me?

Catullus, c. 10

My Varus had led me out of the forum

(I was up to no good) to see his girlfriend, 

a slutette I figured that out right away, 

though not crude and not bad looking. We got here,

started gabbing, one thing suggested the next, 

who with, what’s the latest in Bithynia 

going on, how was the state of things, and how

much money had I pocketed. I replied 

about what was actually the case, that

nothing was in it for the locals, or for

the higher-ups or their underlings, how would

anyone come back with a greasier pate

in particular those who had a fuckface

for a boss who gave not a shit for his crew.

‘Well at any rate,’ somebody said, ‘what of

the local product they talk about, you did

procure some muscle to do the lifting.’ I,

to make myself out to be one helluva 

lucky guy to the girl, said ‘I was not so 

down and out that, granted it had been my luck

to draw a sorry province, I could not get

eight men standing straight and tall.’ But the fact is

I didn’t have a single one either here 

or there who could position the broken leg

of a cheap cot on his own neck. At this point she,

the kind of thing little bitches tend to do,

said, ‘I’m begging you, my Catullus, just for

a little while let me borrow them. For I

want to be conveyed to Serapis’ temple.’

‘Hold on,” I told the girl, ‘that thing I just now

said I had, my brain slipped, my guy Cinna is —

Gaius — he got them for himself. But if they’re

his or mine, what’s it to me? I make use of

them just as much as if I’d gottten them for

me. But you’re a rude and bitchy one for reals

around whom you can’t let down your defenses.’

Catullus, c. 11

Furius and Aurelius, Catullus’

comrades, if he’ll dig deep into India’s

end tips where loud roaring long’s the East-wave and

the shore is pounded,

 

if among the Tiger Men or mild Arabs,

or the Sakai or the Parthians arrow-

toting or the flatlands which are dark steeped by

the Nile seven-mouthed,

 

if across the high Alps he will make his way 

on foot to go and see great Caesar’s trophies,

the Gallic Rhine, the waters dreadful, and off

the farthest, Britains,

 

the all of it, whatever celestials’

will shall bring to pass — poised to make a stab at

all at once, announce some tidings to my girl,

words, not good ones, said.

 

When she’s alive and  well with her very own

philanderers whom all three-hundred at once

she hugs and holds in love with none but again, 

again, breaking balls;

 

let her not look, as before, for my love, which,

the blame is hers, has fallen just like the bloom

on the meadow-edge after it was touched with

a plow passing-by.