20 I 2003 - 20:47 - verba fessa

Before I sleep, some offerings. You know who you're for. I'll come up with a different Catullus soon -- I actually had a different one in mind, but things caught up with me...

Oedipus and the Enigma (Jorge Luis Borges)

Four-footed at dawn, in the daytime tall,
and wandering three-legged down the hollow
reaches of evening: thus did the sphinx,
the eternal one, regard his restless fellow,
mankind: and at evening came a man
who, terror-struck, discovered as in a mirror
his own decline set forth in the monstrous image,
his destiny, and felt a chill of terror.
We are Oedipus and everlastingly
we are the long tripartite beast; we are
all that we were and will be, nothing less.
It would destroy us to look steadily
at our full being. Mercifully God grants us
the ticking of the clock, forgetfulness.

(translated Alan S. Trueblood)

Mellitos oculos tuos (Catullus)

Iuventius, if someone should allow me
to kiss your honeyed eyes continually,
even up to three hundred thousands I would kiss them --
and never would I seem even about to be sated,
not if the crop of our kissing
should be thicker than dry ears of grain.