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After all, it is a long while.
Ages and ages lie as dust between us.
Yet even they would scarce have seemed to you
time enough to slake the scorching thirst
of your dark blood, Caius Catullus.

You held your life like a ripe fruit
full of a subtle tang, acrid and sweet,
crushed to your lips
till you had sucked from the bright bitter rind
the last morsel of pulp.

And when your purse had in it nothing but cobwebs
you invited the guests to bring their own wines to the banquet,
and from the cushions of your ivory bed
while Lesbia and Juventius
muffled in the voluminous scarlet of your cloak
whispered love at your ear,
you surveyed with glittering eyes black as agates
each arriving guest:
he of the sallow face yellower than a gilded statue's,
Gellius thin as a rose leaf,
the beloved Fabullus and Verannius in their bracelets
just back from an unfruitful campaign,
then the sunlight filling with amber the irised wine cups,
the brown feet of the dancing girl from Cadiz
in the whining of flutes, clatter of crotales,
crushing to fragrance the strown marjoram
on the veined pavement,
and beyond all these
under the wind-shaken awning of the portico,
the gold-footed peacocks strutting and bowing
to their green reflections in the polished floor,
storm buffeted galleys veering and tacking
on a porphyry sea.