Classic Poem

It is good to be as you are, young, handsome, virile, alive to love and flesh——
ah, better than being a mere poet,
and with being a poet as well,
better than being a mere god,
for rare is the god who is young and handsome——
rare as a like poet.


O Catullus,
not even the god outlives the poet,
nor is the god more idolized by those who worship with the kiss——
for even Apollo thirsted for the liquor of the lips. Young, handsome, virile,
he waited and bewailed, with luck no better than Orpheus had,
no better than you had, not so good as you had.


Young, handsome, virile,
patrician of pen and passion, superior of appearance, why bewail?
Kisses were yours in abundance, and of the very best in Rome.
But Sappho and you would well divide all ancient kisses between you——
or at any rate the best of them. O Western Emperor of song——
supreme by divine right rather than by conquest or usurpation——
masterful by virtue of all that ever made the ripe flesh sing——
live being who kissed and wrote, and graced the long night with utterance of all that matters——
go to Sappho and kiss her. Pass the eternal night with Sappho.
Create an immortal dynasty, one of song and kissing,
with a plebeity of ascetics, the platonists, the puritans, crushed, segregated, relegated,
damned as I damn them, even I. But Lesbia? Tut, Catullus——

I loved a cat. She returned my love, and therefore loved a poet.
I made her mistress of my house. I made her lady of my acres.
I thrilled when she deigned to eat with me. I thought of odes to her dead sparrows.
My lady was regal, imperious, and cowed the other cats with a mere glance.
At will she came and went, hunted, romped, ranged, loved,——
but, Roman, when she loved, her heart went always abroad——
always to some low stranger, some aspiring plebe, some old beggar,
rather than to any one of the lordly males about her. After a while
I heard her sweet name whispered here and there about the countryside,
now mentioned with loud laugh, and now with lecherous chuckle. I told her,
but she looked straight through me, as from a distance, and down through the ages. I restricted her,
confined her, until I was almost sure that she was beginning to hate me.
I laughed, as from a distance, and back through the ages. I let her go.
I kept her love, all that she ever had for me. I lost nothing.
O Catullus.
what would you have really lost had you laughingly let Lesbia go?
Nothing that was yours alone, except an impassioned poem. Yet——
must there not be poetic love? Must there not always be good poems?