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page 44
‘Yin-yo laps in the reeds, my guest departs, The maple leaves blot up their shadows, The sky is full of autumn, We drink our parting in saki. Out of the night comes troubling lute music, And we cry out, asking the singer’s name, And get this answer: “Many a one Brought me rich presents; my hair was full of jade, And my slashed skirts, drenched in expensive dyes, Were dipped in crimson, sprinkled with rare wines. I was well taught my arts at Ga-ma-rio, And then one year I faded out and married”. The lute-bowl hid her face. ‘We heard her weeping’. Society, her sparrows, Venus’ sparrows, and Catullus Hung on the phrase (played with it as Mallarmé Played for a fan, ‘Rêveuse pour que je plonge’); Wrote out his crib from Sappho: ‘God’s peer that man is in my sight – Yea, and the very gods are under him, Who sits opposite thee, facing thee, near thee, Gazing his fill and hearing thee, And thou smilest. Woe to me, with Quenched senses, for when I look upon thee, Lesbia, There is nothing above me And my tongue is heavy, and along my veins Runs the slow fire, and resonant Thunders surge in behind my ears, And the night is thrust down upon me’.      That was the way of love, flamma dimanat. And in a year, ‘I love her as a father’; And scarce a year, ‘Your words are written in water’; And in ten moons, ‘Caelius, Lesbia illa – That Lesbia, Caelius, our Lesbia, that Lesbia Whom Catullus once loved more Than his own soul and all his friends, 10 Posthumous Cantos
page 45
Is now the drab of every lousy Roman’. So much for him who puts his trust in woman. So the murk opens. Dordoigne! When I was there, There came a centaur, spying the land, And there were nymphs behind him. Or going on the road by Salisbury Procession on procession – For that road was full of peoples, Ancient in various days, long years between them. Ply over ply of life still wraps the earth here. Catch at Dordoigne. Viscount St. Antoni In the warm damp of spring, Feeling the night air full of subtle hands, Plucks at a viol, singing: ‘As the rose – Si com, si com’ – they all begin ‘si com’. ‘For as the rose in trellis Winds in and through and over, So is your beauty in my heart, that is bound through and over. So lay Queen Venus in her house of glass, The pool of worth thou art, Flood-land of pleasure’. But the Viscount Pena Went making war into an hostile country Where he was wounded: ‘The news held him dead’. St. Antoni in favour, and the lady Ready to hold his hands – This last report upset the whole convention. She rushes off to church, sets up a gross of candles, Pays masses for the soul of Viscount Pena.      Thus St. Circ has the story: ‘That sire Raimon Jordans, of land near Caortz, Lord of St. Antoni, loved this Viscountess of Pena “Gentle” and “highly prized”. And he was good at arms and bos trobaire, I  Three Cantos 11

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‘Yin-yo laps in the reeds, my guest departs, The maple leaves blot up their shadows, The sky is full of autumn, We drink our parting in saki. Out of the night comes troubling lute music, And we cry out, asking the singer’s name, And get this answer:

“Many a one

Brought me rich presents; my hair was full of jade, And my slashed skirts, drenched in expensive dyes, Were dipped in crimson, sprinkled with rare wines. I was well taught my arts at Ga-ma-rio, And then one year I faded out and married”. The lute-bowl hid her face.

‘We heard her weeping’.

Society, her sparrows, Venus’ sparrows, and Catullus Hung on the phrase (played with it as Mallarmé Played for a fan, ‘Rêveuse pour que je plonge’); Wrote out his crib from Sappho: ‘God’s peer that man is in my sight – Yea, and the very gods are under him, Who sits opposite thee, facing thee, near thee, Gazing his fill and hearing thee, And thou smilest. Woe to me, with Quenched senses, for when I look upon thee, Lesbia, There is nothing above me And my tongue is heavy, and along my veins Runs the slow fire, and resonant Thunders surge in behind my ears, And the night is thrust down upon me’.      That was the way of love, flamma dimanat. And in a year, ‘I love her as a father’; And scarce a year, ‘Your words are written in water’; And in ten moons, ‘Caelius, Lesbia illa – That Lesbia, Caelius, our Lesbia, that Lesbia Whom Catullus once loved more Than his own soul and all his friends,

10 Posthumous Cantos

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