And this is the first of the long poems I have slightly dreaded

61 is Catullus trying to sell us a vision of perfect conventional matrimonial love that I don't think he quite believes in. It's what he feels he ought to want, rather than what he does want. And it is weirdly conventional, heteronormative and patriarchal given much of the rest of the poems. There are times when he reminds me of Scott Fitzgerald and holding two contradictory beliefs in his mind at the same time.

Still, bits of it are very pretty and one or two bits have the snarkery of the shorter poems.

( This ended up being fairly free, and it doesn't half go on and on )

A poem I have waited thirty-one years to write

She has been sick so long that we forget
how much we hate her still, how ever much
her sense of self grows vague, or out of touch
with her bleak legacy she seems. And yet -

there is no yet, no pity. She was not
the kind to pity, thought such feelings weak,
the rust that eats the iron. You might seek
in vain for mercy in her. She forgot

so many things before she lost her mind,
that markets are just people, that no war
is ever won, that what has come before
always returns, and not to be unkind,

and so, no mercy to her. Watch her breath
stutter and fade, then drink toasts to her death.

Another poem

SAN FRANCISCO 1906

Sometimes it is the last day. Sun shines still,
a horse crosses the tram-line, pulls a cart
loaded with sacks. We see, but have no art
to know what's in them. Further up the hill

two women talk, hurry across the street
Did they survive next day? We'll never know,
though we see as they run, their long skirts blow
up from their ankles, while they keep their neat

manicured hands to hold their hats on tight.
And everything we see burned or fell down
twenty hours later. Horse and girls and town
all buried, ashes, dust. Out of our sight

they go, and out of life, and all we've seen
not memory, just fragments on a screen.

I forgot to thank jonquil for posting me to this clip...