Translation:
Let us live, my Lesbia and let us love,
and as for the mutterings of over-severe old men,
we’ll reckon them all worth merely a penny.
Suns can set and return:
for us, when the brief light once sets,
there is one everlasting night, enforcing sleep.
Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred,
then another thousand, then a second hundred,
then yet another thousand, then a hundred,
then, when we’ve made many thousands,
we’ll mix them up, so that we lose count,
or no bad person can envy us,
when he learns how many kisses there are.
 
I first came across this poem many many years ago in my high school Latin class.  I was enthralled.  At that time, no one was talking about queer folk in the classroom, and so in hearing this poem I felt a secret fire be fed within me.  It didn’t matter that Catullus was speaking of a woman from the island of Lesbos: for the first time I felt somehow acknowledged and reflected in the world before me.  I’ve carried this poem with me since that moment.  There is something powerful about presence over time.  There is something powerful and playful about the interplay of both showing oneself and hiding in plain sight.  I invite you to join me in that trickster dance.
 
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