Poems Read online

glass balls to cool her hands in the hot season.

  When cross she asks me for those ivory dice,

  trinkets the Sacred Way would have you acquire.

  Though I don’t give a toss about the price,

  being conned by a cheating girl – that cost is higher.

  II.24b

  This is it, then, the bliss you promised me?

  ‘So beautiful – and so fickle.’ Aren’t you ashamed?

  Barely one or two nights of love and already

  it turns out I’m a threat to your bed-springs.

  A short while back you were praising me, reading my poems;

  a quick flash of wings and Amor changes direction?

  Let this man compete with my talent, my writings;

  and first, let him learn his roving days are over.

  If you like, let him fight the Hydra of Lerna,

  bring you apples snatched from the Hesperides’ snake;

  maybe swallow vile poisons, the salt water of shipwreck,

  never shirk any misery for your sake.

  (I wish, darling, you’d put me through those tests).

  This tiger will prove to be a pussy-cat,

  however much his boasts have pumped up his fame:

  you’ll break up next year would be my forecast.

  But I won’t be changed by the Sibyl’s longevity,

  or the labours of Hercules or death’s black day.

  You’ll lay me out, saying: ‘Propertius, are these

  your bones? You loved me till your last hour,

  you were loyal, although no blue-blooded

  aristocrat, and certainly not that rich.’

  I’ll tolerate anything; treat me badly – it makes

  no difference: a beautiful woman’s a light burden.

  Beauty – many men, I think, fell for that,

  but not many had, I think, the staying power.

  Theseus’ love for Ariadne was short-lived,

  and Demophoon’s for Phyllis, two bad guests.

  Medea, famously taken on Jason’s ship,

  was abandoned by the man she had just saved.

  Don’t offer yourself to men of high birth or money:

  they won’t be at your funeral when that day arrives.

  But I will be – though I pray you’ll be mourning me,

  unfastening your hair, beating your bare breasts.

  II.25

  Cynthia, most lovely obsession,

  born to hurt me,

  (locked doors were ever my fate),

  my slim volumes will make your beauty sweep the world,

  by leave of Calvus

  & pace Catullus.

  The veteran takes off his weapons,

  goes into retirement,

  in old age bulls refuse to pull the plough,

  the crumbling ship rests on empty sand,

  the worn-out shield

  lies unused in some temple.

  However old I get,

  I won’t stop loving you even

  if I’m a latter-day Tithonus or Nestor.

  Better, surely, to have served a ruthless tyrant

  & groaned in cruel Perillus’ bull?

  Better to have turned to stone at the Gorgon’s stare,

  even been chewed by those Caucasus vultures?

  I’ll stick with it, though.

  Rust wears down the iron sword

  & water droplets flint.

  But the drip-drip of his girl’s recriminations

  never wears down the lover:

  his undeserving ear outlasts her anger.

  Spurn him, he keeps on asking,

  confesses he’s wrong

  even when right, comes back for more

  on reluctant feet.

  You, my friend, who put on airs

  because your love’s at its zenith,

  don’t be fooled: long-term constancy

  is not something women are known for.

  Who discharges vows to the gods as the storm is raging,

  when ships can get torn to splinters

  even in port?

  What charioteer claims his prize with the race still on,

  before his axle goes down the home straight?

  In love, mendacious winds pretend to favour us:

  when disaster strikes late

  it strikes hardest.

  Meanwhile, though she says she loves you,

  keep that good feeling to your chest, eh?

  She may call you often – you just need to go once:

  what arouses envy

  often is short-lived.

  If today’s girls were enamoured of the old ways,

  I’d be where you are now:

  time defeats me.

  Not that the new ways will change my character:

  each to his own path.

  You men who scout for multiple love-affairs,

  that way lies painful torture of the eyes!

  You see a girl with soft, pure white skin,

  & you see a dark one;

  each complexion entices.

  You see Greek girls walking the way they do,

  & you see Roman girls;

  each figure captivates.

  One dresses casually,

  one in haute couture:

  no matter – all roads lead to doom.

  Just one woman’s eyes spell I-N-S-O-M-N-I-A,

  so one woman’s enough;

  lots of them’s bad news.

  II. 26a

  I dreamed I saw you shipwrecked, darling,

  your hands flailing in the Ionian Sea,

  and you confessing all the lies you’d told me,

  though you couldn’t even lift your soaking hair.

  Thinking of Helle, tossed by purple waves

  when she fell from the soft back of the golden sheep,

  I feared you might name a sea – the Cynthiaspont! –

  and sailors, gliding through your strait, would weep.

  The prayers I raised to Neptune, Castor, Pollux

  (and Helle’s deified stepmother too)!

  And now your hands just reach above the swirl;

  you’re going to die, you keep calling my name.

  If Glaucus saw your eyes you’d be his girl

  of the Ionian Sea,

  with nymphs muttering enviously about you,

  white Nesaee, cerulean Cymothoe …

  But then I saw a dolphin race to save you,

  surely the one that carried Arion and his lyre.

  I was thinking of diving down from off a rock,

  when my dream vanished and I woke from shock.

  II.26b

  My girl is thinking of making

  a long sea journey. I’ll go with her,

  one wind blowing two lovers,

  one beach where we’ll sleep,

  one tree for our cover,

  one spring for us to drink,

  one plank where we both can lie,

  whether prow or stern is our bunk.

  Nothing will be too hard for me,

  though a vicious east wind harasses

  or a cold southerly drives our sails

  towards the uncertain, the gales

  that tormented Ulysses

  and the thousand ships of the Greeks

  on the Evia coast, or moved two rocks

  when a dove was sent to guide

  the Argo’s maiden voyage

  over an unknown sea.

  So long as I can see her,

  Jove himself can burn our vessel.

  We’ll be flung naked together

  on the same shore: let the water

  sweep me away, provided

  the earth will give you burial.

  But Neptune won’t be hard

  on a love like ours; as a lover

  he matches his brother Jupiter.

  Amymone, spread-eagled

  in the fields while fetching water

  can testify to that, and Lerna

  marsh struck by th
e trident.

  The god made good on his promise,

  once disentangled from her;

  her golden pitcher poured

  the water he had conjured.

  And ravished Orithyia

  will not say the North Wind was cruel,

  he who tames the land and the tall seas.

  Believe me, even Scylla

  will grow gentle, and Charybdis,

  whose vast ebb and flow never ceases.

  The stars will be unclouded,

  Orion clear – and Auriga.

  To lay down my life for your body:

  a worthy end for us both?

  II.27

  You seek the unknowable, mortals – your final hour

  and the way death will come;

  you seek gypsy lore in a clear sky,

  what star bodes well or ill for men.

  If we march to the Middle East, or sail to Britain,

  the dangers of land and sea are in our blind-spot;

  at home, revolution has us in its sights,

  its outcome wavering as forces join battle;

  houses go up in flames or down in ruins,

  dark potions await your lips.

  Only the lover knows when he will perish

  and why; he fears no weaponry or north wind.

  Though he sits in the Stygian reed-beds, oar in hand,

  and sees the deadly sails of the underworld ferry:

  should the distant call of his girl come wafting down,

  he’ll make the forbidden journey back to the living.

  II.28

  Jupiter, miserere this sick girl:

  if such beauty dies, you will bear the guilt.

  Comes the season of wavering heat haze,

  the dry earth starts to bake in the dog days –

  but the weather’s not to blame, nor the crimes of heaven,

  so much as disrespecting the gods so often.

  Is Venus piqued they compared you to her? That goddess

  always was resentful of loveliness.

  Did you neglect the temples of Juno,

  or say Minerva’s eyes were … well … so-so?

  You beauties can be careless in your language.

  Your looks have caused it, and your sharp tongue.

  After all the perils, though, of a troubled life

  may your last day bring time of relief.

  For ages Io, head down, was a lowing cow

  and drank from the Nile, where she’s worshipped now.

  Ino, who roamed the earth in earlier years,

  is the recipient of sailors’ prayers.

  Callisto paced Arcadia as a bear:

  now ships at night are guided by her star.

  Should fate bring forward your requiem

  aeternam, beatified by burial, then

  you’ll tell Semele of beauty’s dangers;

  she’ll believe it, taught by her own misadventures;

  among all Homer’s heroines you’ll be

  in first place; none of them will not make way.

  As best you can, submit to fate in sickness:

  the gods can change; so can illa dies.

  The magician’s wand and chant prove of no worth,

  the laurel lies scorched in the burnt-out hearth,

  the moon’s had it with falling from the sky,

  the owl hoots death’s litany.

  A single ship of fate will take

  our love, dark sails spread on the infernal lake.

  Miserere, I pray, not one but two:

  if she lives, I live; if she falls, I do.

  Grant my pleas and I’ll commit to sacred verse:

  I’ll write: MY GIRL SAVED BY GREAT JUPITER;

  and, reverently sitting at your feet, she’ll

  tell you the story of her long ordeal.

  Your wife Juno will allow you this:

  she’s diminished too by any girl’s demise.

  Persephone, stay clement; and her spouse,

  Pluto, be no more malicious.

  So many beautiful women are there below;

  let one remain up here, if it may be so.

  Europa is with you and sinful Pasiphae,

  and all the finest of old Crete and Achaia,

  Thebes and the kingdom of Priam, fallen in ruin;

  you have Antiope, Tyro of the fair skin,

  and every Roman woman in beauty’s roll-call

  has died; the gluttonous pyre consumed them all.

  Light of my life, released now from great danger,

  pay Diana her due gift, dance for her;

  perform vigils for her who was bovine, now divine.

  And perform for me – ten votive nights are mine.

  II.29a

  I was roaming the streets, plastered, last night, darling –

  I’d given the servants the evening off –

  when a gang of diminutive youths waylaid me

  (in my fright, I forgot to count them);

  some were grasping torches, others arrows,

  and some even looked about to tie me up.

  Anyway, they were naked. The boldest of them

  said: ‘Grab him. You know who he is.

  It’s the one that angry woman hired us to get.’

  He’d hardly said this and a rope was round my neck.

  One called for me to be pushed forward; another

  said: ‘Let’s do him in – he doesn’t believe we’re gods.

  As for you, you jerk, she’s been waiting up for you

  till all hours: you don’t deserve her; you’re on the prowl

  for some other woman.

  When she takes off her bonnet and lifts her heavy eyes,

  what’s going to hit you is not the fragrances

  of Arabian herbs but those

  Amor himself created with his own hands.

  Okay, we’ll let him off, brothers, he says he’ll be true,

  and we’ve reached the house we were told to bring him to.’

  They flung my cloak back on me, saying:

  ‘You can go: just learn to stay at home at night.’

  II.29b

  Morning.

  I went to see if she was lying

  alone: just Cynthia was in her bed.

  And stunning: she had never seemed

  more gorgeous, even in her red negligee,

  going to tell Vesta of her dreams

  in case they spelled bad news for her – or me.

  She looked as though sleep had just set her free,

  a study in the power of pure beauty!

  ‘You’re up betimes. Come to spy on your friend?’

  she asked. ‘You think I live my life like you?

  I’m no pushover: I’m content with carnal

  knowledge of one man – you, or one more true.

  No signs, are there, of hollows in the bed,

  no traces of a tumble just for two?

  Inspect me – yes, all over.

  Am I still panting from some recent sin?’

  She brushed away the kiss I offered,

  jumped up and found her flip-flops on the floor.

  For checking her virtue I was shown the door.

  I haven’t had an easy night since then.

  II.30

  Where are you off to so fast,

  lunatic? There’s no escape:

  you can run to the quiet Don – Love will hunt you down.

  Mount in the air astride Pegasus, strap

  Perseus’ wings to your feet,

  cut the winds with your heels:

  Mercury’s high road won’t help you.

  Amor, the arch villain, looms always over the head

  of the lover, then sits heavy on his neck.

  He’s a cruel, unsleeping jailer, who’ll never allow

  you to look up. Eyes to the ground, prisoner!

  Yet if you sin, the god is open to prayers…

  Just look sharp about it!

  So you’re the hard man? Ready to sail
the Black Sea,

  the lonely Caspian shores?

  Sprinkle the family gods

  with the blood of vengeance, bring back

  fearsome trophies to the ancestral hearth?

  Old buffers can complain

  of the partying, but we’ll keep on

  pounding the road we started, darling;

  their ears may be full of the dust of ancient law books,

  but this is a place for the sound

  of the subtle flute, unjustly thrown

  to float in the Maeander when

  Minerva thought her puffed cheeks made her ugly.

  What’s to apologise for

  if I’m happy with one woman?

  If that’s a crime, Amor’s the criminal –

  don’t blame me. Let our pleasure, Cynthia, be

  the dews and caverns of the lichenous ridges

  where you’ll see Muses dotted among the boulders,

  singing of the old honey traps for Jupiter,

  burned by Semele, undone by Io,

  flying at last, an eagle, to Troy’s roofs.

  If no one’s fought Cupid and lived to tell the tale,

  why am I alone in the dock for collective guilt?

  You won’t make the Muses blush:

  they know what it is to love;

  one, anyway, fell for handsome Oeagrus

  and snuggled up with him in the rocks of Thrace.

  When they put you at the front of their chorus line,

  Bacchus in the middle with his baton,

  I’ll let the ivy fronds swing from my head:

  without you all my inspiration’s dead.

  II.31–32

  Excuse my lateness. The reason? Apollo’s gilded

  portico was being opened by great Caesar.

  It’s one big arcade of Saharan stone columns,

  interspersed with old Danaus’ entire brood of daughters.

  Apollo’s statue looked finer than the real thing,

  the marble mouthing a song to a silent lyre;

  Myron’s cattle stand around the altar,

  four oxen, lifelike signatures of the artist;