C A T U L L U S
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THIRTEEN POEMS

 

Translated by Joseph Bienvenu

 

3.

Mourn, you Venuses and Cupids
and all you radiant young men!
My girlfriend's sparrow is dead,
sparrow, darling of my girl,
who she loved more than her eyes;
since he was sweet as honey, and he knew her
as well as a girl knows her mother,
he, who never left the folds of her lap,
but hopping around this way and that,
chirped for his mistress alone.
Now he walks down that shadowy road
from where no one is ever allowed to return.
May every evil descend on you, savage wraiths of
Orcus, who gobble up everything beautiful;
you have filched my gorgeous sparrow.
O hateful deed! O luckless sparrow!
Now, because of you, my girl's
swollen little eyes are red with weeping.

 

 

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