CATULLUS 35

[rozk]

Go, letter, tell him now, the sensitive
poet Caecilius, that he should take
his leave from Como and its pretty lake
and hasten to Verona, where I live.

If he knew what I know, he would devour
the road in getting here, where I can share
the inner thoughts of one for whom we care
although a pretty girl delays the hour

of his departure, throws her arms around
his neck, and begs him stay. The truth is though
it is his poem that set her aglow
the one about Cybele. So profound

her lust to read the rest, I can't refuse
to think her, and not Sappho, the Tenth Muse.