catullus is for lovers

a translation of the poet-laureate of warm fuzzies ('n rage) which I had begun as a response to brother posting this:

102
Γλύκεια μᾶτερ, οὔ τοι δύναμαι κρέκην τὸν ἴστον,
πόθῳ δάμεισα παῖδοσ βραδίναν δἰ Ἀφρόδιταν.
sweet mother I cannot work the loom
I am broken with longing for a boy by slender Aphrodite
Sappho (from If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho, trans. Anne Carson)

I am in a romantic mood of late, as Aphrodite has been all up in my kitchen eating pierogies, so who should come to mind but Catullus? Carmen 6 popped up, a letter to a friend. this was touching:

Verum nescio quid febriculosi
scorti diligis: hoc pudet fateri.
Nam te non viduas iacere noctes
nequiquam tacitum cubile clamat
sertis ac Syrio fragrans olivo,
pulvinusque peraeque et hic et ille
attritus, tremulique quassa lecti
argutatio inambulatioque.

Really, I don't know if you love
some fevered whore-boy: it shames you to admit this.
For your bed shouts that you, silent in vain,
are not sleeping nights deprived of him,
reeking of flower chains and Syrian oil,
and the pillow equally smashed down here and there,
the creaking and battered roaming of your trembling bed.

...of course, it's well in advance of St. Valentine's day.