Catullus

By turns rapturous, erotic and despairing, this astonishingly modern verse tells of an ancient Roman poet's all-consuming infatuation with one woman.

I Hate and I Love

Pippa 

Sophie Shrimpton

Catullus is ridiculous and it is hilarious. He reminds me of my teenage angst and the extremity of feeling that came along with the dangerous cocktail of hormones and youth. At points his declarations were relatable, which added to the hilarity - laughing at my own extreme swings in emotion in reaction to love.

Slices of absurdity:

I send Lesbia this valediction,
succinctly discourteous:
live with your three hundred lovers
open your legs to them all (simultaneously)
lovelessly dragging the guts out of each of them
each time you do it,
blind to the love I had for you
once, and that you, tart, wantonly crushed
as the passing plough-blade slashes the flower
at the field's edge.

Angst,
 ennui & angst
consumer my days & weeks

Lesbia says she'd rather marry me
than anyone,
 though Jupiter himself came asking
or so she says,
 but what a woman tells her lover in desire
should be written out on air & running water.

Cancel, Catullus, the expectancies of friendship
cancel the kindnesses deemed to accrue there

May the pitying gods who bring 
help to the needy at the point of death
look towards me and, if my life were clean,
tear this malign pest out from my body
where, a paralysis, it creeps from limb to limb
driving all former laughter from the heart.
I do not now expect - or want - my love returned,
nor cry to the moon for Lesbia to be chaste:
only that the gods cure me of this disease
and, as I once was whole, make me now whole again.

I Hate and I Love

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