Translations from Catullus

Jonathan Robbins

Brown University

Catullus 3

Venus and cupid, Spirits of Love,
lament; Desires and Passions, mourn;
and all you warm-hearted boulevardiers,
weep now, for my girlfriend’s sparrow is dead,
her darling bird, more precious to her
than sight. It was sweet, and it knew her
as well as she knew her own mother.

It used to stay right in her lap, hopping
about, here and there, chirping only for its mistress;
now it goes the black path they say none travel back.

Damn you Orcus, ugly shadow!
You swallow up every beautiful thing,
you stole my lovely, delightful bird.
A crime! Poor little sparrow!
My girl’s in tears,
her eyes are red and faintly swollen.

Catullus 7

You want to know how many kisses would be enough for me, Lesbia?
The number of sand grains between the tombs of Libya’s
ancient lords and the temples where Egypt worships Jove in the
shape of a ram.
The number of stars that watch the furtive
love affairs of humankind
while the night is passing over them in silence.
That’s how many would satisfy your crazed Catullus. What can’t
be counted can’t be an unlucky number.

Catullus 11

Furius and Aurelius, you’d follow your Catullus anywhere:
to where the utmost shores of India reecho the
river Ocean thrashing its way around the disk of Earth,
To Hyrcania, to silken Arabia, to Schythia’s frozen fields,
to the archer Parthian’s home, to where the seven
mouths of Nile shoot silty color into the middle sea;
or up the skyish Alps to look out over Gaul, the
Rhine, and Britain out on the earth’s rim—now they’re mere
memoranda of Caesar’s conquering.
My friends, ready to go every place with me, I
only ask you ot ferry back a message, not very long or very
nice, to that girl:
that I hope she’s getting on well with her lovers
she takes on three hundred at a time,
loving not one, but all the same milking their
dicks on an assembly line basis,
not caring about my love, like she used to, my
love cut down (her fault)
like a flower at the edge of a meadow, razed
by the passing plough.