Classic Poem

I

You died two thousand years ago, Catullus,
Myriads since then have walked the earth you knew
All their long lives and faded into nothing,
And still across that waste men think of you.

You loved your Sirmio, and loved your brother,
You gave a pitiless woman all your heart;
You wrote for her, you mourned a sparrow for her,
Served like a slave: and suffering made your art.

Some fiery songs, a few soft elegies,
Perfect — you said you used a pumice-stone:
Coarse little squibs, a rosy song for a wedding,
What else you did, it never will be known.

A proud young man of fashion, whom a woman
Played with and dropped: nothing remains beside;
Only we know, about a certain year,
You went away, out of the glare, and died;

And all your world died after, all the towers
Fell, and the temples mouldered, and the games
Left the great circus empty, and the dust
Buried the Caesars, senators, and dames.

II

I see you lying under marble arches,
Above the bright blue meadow of a bay,
With certain supercilious gross companions
Talking their filth more cleverly than they.

Amusing them, one of them, seeming with them:
They are pleased to find Catullus of their kind;
They sprawl and drink and sneer and jest of wenches,
Pose to you: but they do not hear your mind.

You share debauch, debauch does not distract you,
Your wine is tasteless, pleasureless your ease;
Behind your brutal talk you are cold and lonely,
Sick of the laughter of such men as these.

And even they at times perceive you moody,
Bid you cheer up, are vaguely tired of you,
Damper of pleasure, hypocrite, prig, superior,
Too cranky and vain to think as others do.

For, suddenly, your answers grow abstracted,
Empty, or rough; your eyes go over sea,
Watching a distant sail that seems unmoving,
The symbol of some lost tranquillity;

A silent sail that cuts the clear horizon,
A warm blue sea, a tranquil, cloudless sky,
You sit and gaze, and, as you stare, they guess you
Indifferent though the whole of them should die.

III

" The poet should be chaste, his verses — — " well,
It wasn't Lesbia's view, she did her best,
Tempting and spurning, to weary and degrade you,
To callous you and make you like the rest.

Disliking, piqued by, that strange difference in you,
Contemptuous and curious, she would dare
And then deny, provoke and then repel you,
Yet could not make you other than you were.

The soft-pressed foot, the glance that hinted heat,
The scanty favors always auguring more,
The haughty, cold indifference, mingling twin
Frigidities of the vestal and the whore

Still could not ever more than wound, cloud over,
The eager boy in you she so despised,
The love of fineness, sweetness, loyalty, candor,
The innocent country memories you prized.

IV

A flower in a garden grew, Catullus,
Some time you saw it, and the memory stayed,
One flower of all the flowers you ever glanced at,
A perfect thing of dew and radiance made:

Emblem of youth, plucked, carried away and drooping,
Out of the garden; emblem of your lot,
Perplexed, bewildered, languishing, an alien
Who was born to cherish all his world forgot.