Landscape of the Four Seasons (Catullus 46)
A glacier thaws to blushing spring, then leaks a methane stream.
Contagions ride in business class, between the Equinoxes.
A sneeze-wet palm-shake shakes New York from winter, out of well-bred fops,
but second homes aren’t quarantines and Prospect’s not a plane.
The minarets of Istanbul, stone pines of Rome, green Tokyo
glide beneath a camera’d drone inside my railroad.
I wave across the summer waves, and on your screen in flattened space,
a hand-like shape falls not to paint an arbor, but an ardor.
Catullus 46
Iam vēr ēgelidōs refert tepōrēs,
iam caelī furor aequinoctiālis
iūcundīs Zephyrī silēscit aurīs.
Linquantur Phrygiī, Catulle, campī
Nīcaeaeque ager ūber aestuōsae:
ad clārās Asiae volēmus urbēs.
Iam mēns praetrepidāns avet vagārī,
iam laetī studiō pedēs vigēscunt.
Ō dulcēs comitum valēte coetūs,
longē quōs simul ā domō profectōs
dīversae variae viae reportant.
Her Memory (Catullus 2b)
—from the tree in the grass in the dirt, the fruit
from her hand to the crook of his arm, in his bed,
on the bedside stand, to her mouth, in their sweat,
in what felt like an end, but let go a start—
Catullus 2b
Tam grātum est mihi quam ferunt puellae
pernīcī aureolum fuisse mālum,
quod zōnam soluit diū ligātam.