Poems Read online

  There is another coordinating modo in Propertius’ work, but it does not lie in a couplet lost from his first elegy. It comes years later, at the very end of his second book, when he once again reflects upon the situation of Cornelius Gallus, who has recently (modo) been forced to commit suicide by the emperor. Propertius tells a polite lie, implying that it was from the wounds of love that he perished, then passing on the baton of love elegy to Propertius; this is where Pound ends his ‘Homage’. In Stoppard’s play, the fictional Housman also quotes this couplet as he reflects upon the ‘invention of love’, which is to say the inception of the Western tradition of love poetry, by Catullus, Cornelius Gallus and Propertius: ‘Lately. Modo. Just recently. They were real people to each other, that’s the thing … Apollo there in person, but you can trust it, that’s what I mean …’ This is the paradox of Propertian elegy. It is profoundly rooted in the everyday experiences of real people living lives, but the poems describe highly arch, theatrical scenarios. Myth is often the point where the apparently breathless earnestness of the first-person lover meets the ironic artifice of the poet.

  The raw material of Propertian elegy consists of the emotions, situations and difficulties in love affairs that are common to humankind, but the particular scenarios depicted in the elegies are highly wrought fictions in which the first-person narrator is often of dubious reliability. The relationship between art and life in Propertius is illustrated by a famous painting Propertius alludes to in an elegy (II.3) in which he tries to give an impression of the beauty of his Cynthia. Zeuxis was one of the most famous painters of ancient Greece, and his masterpiece, a portrait of Helen of Troy, later came to hang in Rome. The story of its genesis, as told by Cicero and others, is that the painter could not find one woman beautiful enough to be the model for his Helen, so he painted a composite portrait, combining the most beautiful features from a multitude of models. This, hints Propertius, is the way he created Cynthia, the woman and the poetry about her: as a composite fictional synthesis based upon fragments of reality. Propertius was not only involved in the ‘invention of love’, as one of the founders of the most influential genre of love poetry in the history of Western literature; he was also one of the inventors of autobiography as a genre of poetic fiction.

  Peter Heslin

  Professor of Classics, Durham University

  BOOK ONE

  I.1

  Cynthia was first, her eyes

  made me her abject prisoner-of-war.

  I had till then been untouched by Amor,

  who now pulled down the vanity of my glance,

  trampled my head with his feet.

  That villain taught me to despise

  respectable girls and lead an aimless life.

  It’s a year now this lunacy won’t leave me,

  the whole pantheon ranged against me.

  Tullus, you’ve read that Milanion shirked nothing

  to break down the contempt of Atalanta.

  He roamed demented through Arcadian wilds,

  killed beasts, was wounded by the centaur’s club,

  made the rocks echo with his moans …

  And so tamed the girl sprinter,

  such is the power of word and deed in love.

  My slow-witted passion can think up no such tricks,

  the map from the past is forgotten.

  But you who claim you can bring down the moon

  and appease spirits with magic fires,

  now’s your chance! Change the mind of my beloved,

  let her pallor exceed mine!

  Then I’ll believe you can summon

  stars and ghosts with your witches’ songs.

  And you, my friends, too late to stop my fall,

  fetch first aid at least for a sick heart.

  Scalpel, cautery, I’ll bear it all

  with fortitude – just give me

  the freedom to say what anger dictates.

  Take me across the sea, to the furthest lands,

  where no woman will know where I travel.

  But you stay here, whose prayers the god has heard,

  live for ever in safe, requited love.

  The Venus I know torments me through the night,

  a love never unemployed or absent.

  Shun this malediction, I tell you:

  let each hold to his own, and though

  the feeling grows familiar, not move on.

  Listen to my advice. Don’t hesitate,

  or you’ll recall these words with pain. Too late!

  I.2

  What’s the sense, darling, going out

  in a fancy coiffure, swinging the sheer pleats

  of an outfit from Kos, plastering your hair

  with oriental ‘product’? Imported finery

  makes you the product.

  Commercial artifice ruins nature’s assets,

  masks your body’s innate lustre.

  No concoction will enhance your figure,

  believe me. Amor is naked, unadorned,

  and has no love for beauty salon contrivers.

  Undug earth still sends up

  a profusion of colours, ivy comes better

  left to its own devices, finer specimens

  of arbutus grow in remote valleys, streams

  don’t have to study what course to follow.

  Common pebbles dot the prettiest beaches.

  Ever hear of birds taking singing lessons?

  It wasn’t their dress sense that caused Leucippus’ daughters

  to give Castor and Pollux the hots,

  or set lustful Apollo and Idas

  at odds over Marpessa;

  Hippodamia needed no cosmetics

  to catch the eye of the foreign suitor

  and get driven away in his chariot.

  Jewellery was superfluous to their faces,

  their complexions out of Apelles’ paintings.

  They put no thought into winning lovers worldwide,

  their beauty enough to shed their virginity.

  I worry you might rate me lower than rivals:

  pleasing one man is all

  the make-up a woman needs,

  seeing how Apollo gave you his gift of song,

  Calliope skill on the lyre in abundance,

  and how grace and wit roll off your tongue,

  and Minerva and Venus would give you their seal of approval.

  Such arts ensure you my undying love

  (so long as you quickly tire of cheap luxuries).

  I.3

  On Naxos, Ariadne

  comatose on the empty sand

  while Theseus’ ship dwindles into nothing;

  Andromeda gorging on her first sleep,

  free now from the unforgiving rock;

  a Thracian maenad, danced out,

  tumbled on the grass beside the river.

  Cynthia, head on outsplayed fingers

  and breathing quietly, could be one of these

  as I stumble in, the worse for drink,

  and the servants’ torches gutter. It is late.

  Not yet incapable, I weave

  towards the couch her body lightly imprints;

  Eros and Bacchus – neither to be denied –

  fill me with their respective fires: just tuck

  your arm, they order, gently beneath her frame,

  press lips to lips, take sword in hand and …

  Can’t do it. Daren’t disturb her rest.

  She can be savage. I know her tongue’s lash.

  Instead I hover, gawping like Argus

  at the horns that sprang from Io.

  And, Cynthia, I put my garland on your brow,

  amuse myself arranging your stray hair,

  balance apples furtively on your cleavage,

  only to see my largesse roll away:

  sleeper’s ingratitude!

  Your every sigh,

  every slight tremor has me terrified;

  it means bad dreams trouble your head


  – someone taking you by force …

  The moon marching past the shutter slats,

  the busy moon, its light lingering too long,

  opens her eyes. She speaks, propped on one elbow:

  ‘Back home to bed with me? She turned you out, then?

  How nasty of her! So, where was it,

  the place you spent the night you’d promised me?

  Look at you, fit for nothing and the stars set.

  You bastard! I’d like you to pass

  a few nights the way you expect of me.

  I tried to stay awake with needlework,

  playing snatches of music as I drooped.

  Just the occasional complaint, sitting alone,

  that you were quite so long in that woman’s arms.

  That was my last thought as I lay back crying,

  before sleep nudged me with its soothing wings.’

  I.4

  Why with your paeans for multifarious girls

  are you trying, Bassus, to force me

  to dump my own true-love and find another?

  Why not allow me the rest of my life

  in familiar servitude?

  You could laud Antiope’s profile,

  sing the praises of Spartan Hermione, perhaps;

  the finest examples of that Age of Beauty

  are undistinguished next to Cynthia.

  So how could she lose in the harshest court of judgment

  against the third-rate ‘lovelies’ that you mention?

  Her figure is the least part of my passion;

  there’s other things to die for, Bassus:

  her fresh complexion, the grace of her body movement,

  the pleasures I enjoy discovering

  beneath the reticence of her dress …

  The more you seek to sabotage our love,

  the more we frustrate you with our constancy.

  Your comeuppance looms: she’ll be livid when she hears;

  you’ve made an enemy, one who won’t be silent;

  Cynthia won’t let me see you, or look you up

  herself; she won’t forget this outrage;

  she’s going to go round all the girls in town,

  bad-mouthing you: every door will be slammed shut.

  There’s no altar she won’t weep on,

  no sacred stone.

  There’s nothing that tries Cynthia more sorely

  than her beauty going to waste because love is stolen –

  especially mine. May it always be so,

  may I never find anything to complain of in her.

  So basta! with your envious, spiteful jibes:

  we’ll keep on the road we’re travelling, side-by-side.

  I.5

  Are you off your head, Gallus?

  You actually want the purgatory I put up with?

  Prepare, then, to know ultimate hardships, my friend,

  walk through unimaginable fires,

  drain all the toxic potions in Thessaly.

  Cynthia’s not one of those easy-come, easy-go girls:

  she’s not one to get angry with you nicely.

  Even when she’s ready to gratify you,

  she’ll have a thousand hassles up her sleeve!

  She won’t let you sleep or take your eyes off her:

  she ties men down with her moody fits.

  I can see you now at my door when she’s turned you away,

  your words of bravado failing as you snivel,

  hands shaking, fear

  leaving its ugly mark upon your features,

  not able to spit out your sorry story,

  not knowing who you are or where!

  You’ll learn then the harsh terms of my girl’s service,

  and what exclusion means.

  You’ll understand the whiteness in my face,

  why I seem shrivelled in my body.

  Don’t imagine your ancestry can help your love life.

  Love has no time for dusty oil-paintings.

  Let the slightest hint of your folly go public,

  and your noble name’s an instant piece of gossip!

  Don’t expect any remedy from me then,

  when I don’t have a cure for my own ailment;

  fellow sufferers from a common love,

  we’ll weep on each other’s shoulders …

  So don’t ask, Gallus, what Cynthia is capable

  of doing: when she says yes, it’s your funeral.

  I.6

  To cross the Adriatic with you, Tullus,

  would be just fine, spread sail on the Aegean;

  together we could climb Arctic mountain ranges,

  or travel south to see the Ethiopians.

  What holds me back? My girl’s arms and her tongue,

  her white-faced rages, her insistent pleading.

  She rattles on all night about her passion,

  how my leaving would prove gods don’t exist;

  I don’t love her, she says, running through the list

  of what angry girlfriends do to ungrateful men.

  One hour of this complaining is my limit:

  A laid-back relationship? Forget it!

  Why bother going to Athens to read philosophy,

  or visiting Asia Minor’s monuments,

  if as soon as anchor’s weighed Cynthia starts

  madly scratching my face and abusing me,

  claiming storm-delay’s the sole reason for my kisses

  and the supreme evil is male fecklessness?

  Go and pave the way for your uncle’s prestigious posting,

  restore the rule of law to forgetful allies.

  From your boyhood you never had much time for loving –

  the nation’s defence topped your priorities.

  Let’s hope the cherub spares you my troubles,

  everything at the root of my distress.

  Fate always wanted me horizontal:

  let me resume perpetual profligacy.

  Many have gladly lived and died as lovers –

  may my headstone record me among their number.

  I wasn’t born for glory or battle:

  destiny drafted me into another army.

  You, perhaps, will be in easy-living Ionia,

  where the Pactolus washes the fields with gold-dust;

  but whether you tramp the land or plough the sea,

  you’ll be part of the imperial success story.

  Think of me once in a while for a few minutes,

  and know for sure that the stars frown on me.

  I.7

  You’re deep into ancient Thebes, Ponticus,

  the horrors of fratricidal war –

  rivalling old Homer, I would swear,

  (if history’s as kind to your work as to his).

  I’m grappling, as usual, with love poems, searching

  for the mot juste for a demanding woman:

  ten percent inspiration, ninety percent vexation,

  as I chronicle the trials of my life.

  That’s how I spend my days, it’s what I’m known for,

  that’s how I hope to build a reputation.

  The spurned lover can pore over my verse,

  maybe learning something from my troubles,

  impressed that I regularly pleasured a girl of letters,

  Ponticus (and put up with undeserved tantrums).

  If The Lad picks you off with a well-aimed bowshot

  (you really shouldn’t have insulted the gods I serve!),

  your camps, your seven armies will seem a world away,

  unresponsive, immobile. You’ll be sorry then!

  You’ll wish, vainly, you could write elegiacs,

  but love will have come too late to prompt your pen.

  You’ll be amazed I’m considered a leading poet,

  the preferred reading of Rome’s literati;

  young lovers will be bound to say as they pass my tomb:

  ‘Laureate of our passion, are you really dead?
’

  So don’t you scorn my songs so high-mindedly:

  fame can pay a big bonus when delayed.

  I.8a

  You’ve gone mad, then.

  Our love doesn’t hold you back?

  The freezing Balkans are preferable to me?

  This Mr. What’s-his-name is such a catch

  you’ll leave me and go off wherever the wind blows?

  You don’t mind hearing a furious sea howl,

  tough enough to make your bed on a ship’s planks?

  You feel like trampling frost with your delicate feet,

  trudging through snow we don’t get in Rome,

  Cynthia?

  I long for the winter storms to rage twice over,

  sailors killing time as the Pleiades loiter,

  ropes not to be cast off from Italy’s shores,

  my prayers not to float away on a hostile breeze,

  leaving me rooted on an empty beach,

  calling you cruel, shaking my angry fist.

  But still,

  however you’ve treated me, promise-breaker,

  let the sea-nymphs not frown upon your journey,

  favourable winds not die and becalm you once

  your ship is under way;

  and when you’ve safely rounded Karaburun,

  let the placid waters of Orikum receive you.

  Don’t worry: marriage torches won’t tempt me

  to stop cursing my luck at your doorway,

  darling.

  I won’t stop asking sailors hurrying past:

  ‘Tell me the port where my girl’s being kept.’

  ‘She can follow Jason and the Argonauts

  to the Black Sea and back, she’ll still be mine,’

  I shall say.