Catullus, a poet

A few year's ago, the TTC (Toronto Transit C... something) started putting poetry up in some of its advertising space.

Most of the poems they post are not my kind of poetry, but this one was good. It is by Catullus, and the translation that I have found reads like this:

Let us live, my Lesbia, and love,
and value at one farthing
all the talk of crabbed old men.
Suns may set and rise again.
For us, when the short light has once set,
remains to be slept the sleep of one unbroken night.
Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred,
Then another thousand, then a second hundred,
then yet thousand, then a hundred.
Then, when we have made up many thousands,
we will confuse our counting, that we may not know the reckoning,
nor any malicious person blight them with evil eye,
when he knows that our kisses are so many.

Apparently, this poet, Gaius Valerius Catullus was having an affair with a married woman (who he calls Lesbia in his poems) and he wrote that poem during the affair. Eventually, her husband died (rumours that she poisoned him), and she went on to have affairs with other men, breaking Catullus’ heart. (Or so I gather from this other poem that I found)

I hate and love. Why I do so, perhaps you ask.
I know not, but I feel it, and I am in torment.

I developed enough of a taste for poetry that I have started a list... check it out on this blog page: Poetry