Love is Not

Love is not just a function of the eyes.

Beautiful objects will, of course, inspire

Possessive urges - you need not despise

Your taste. But when insatiable desire

Inflames you for a girl who's out of fashion,

Lacking in glamour - plain, in fact that fire

Is genuine; that's the authentic passion.

Beauty, though, any critic can admire.

Presenting myself

How Many Kisses

How many kisses satisfy,

How many are enough and more,

You ask me, Lesbia. I reply,

As many as the Libyan sands

Sprinkling the Cyrenaic shore

Where silphium grows, between the places

Where old King Battus’s tomb stands

And Jupiter Ammon has his shrine

In Siwa’s sweltering oasis;

As many as the stars above

That in the dead of midnight shine

Upon men’s secrecies of love.

When he has all those kisses, mad-

Hungry Catullus will have had

Enough to slake his appetite

So many that sharp eyes can’t tell

The number, and the tongues of spite

Are too confused to form a spell.