Catullus
What do I see in you, someone inquires,
you brash and cocky playboy, dead at thirty,
and why spend years transcribing your desires?
Your life was loose, your language often dirty.
I doubt I'd even like you, if we met:
you, born to riches, quick to fling abuse,
and loath to waste a thought or epithet
on women you weren't trying to seduce.
But you were from the sticks, thin-skinned, and spurned
by one you ached for, sure she was the one
love of your sorry life. And I have burned
with love, with hate, with words, as you have done,
though now I'm old enough to be your mother.
Hail and farewell, my counterpart, my brother.
First--extreme apologies for not finding the right way
to fix the indention and wrap problems in the transmission
of the text. I assure our readers that this sonnet was
certainly not typed this way by its poet!
Another strong, plain, direct piece, with a nastily brilliant pun in line two (OK, it’s “cocky”). There is also a subtle echo of Catullus’s famous odi et amo epigram (#85 is it?) in line 12 (“with love, with hate”). The pleasures of subtlety extracted from seeming simplicity are definitely on display, though I might have re-thought
“counterpart,” which seems a bit weak to dock next to the
startling “brother.”
|