Leaving me only ancient custom to honor you as it has been from generation to generation

Catullus, Carmen 101

translated by Grace Andreacchi

Through many peoples and many seas have I travelled

to thee, brother, and these wretched rites of death

I bring a last gift but can speak only to ashes

Since Fortune has taken you from me

Poor brother! stolen you away from me

leaving me only ancient custom to honour you

as it has been from generation to generation

Take from my hands these sad gifts covered in tears

Now and forever, brother, Hail and farewell.

Multas per gentes et multa per aequora vectus

advenio has miseras, frater, ad inferias,

ut te postremo donarem munere mortis

et mutam nequiquam adloquerer cinerem,

quandoquidem fortuna mihi tete abstulit ipsum,

heu miser indigne frater adempte mihi.

nunc tamen interea haec, prisco quae more parentum

tradita sunt tristi munere ad inferias,

accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu

atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale.

Sententiae Antiguae has a poem by Andrea Grenadier “Say Goodbye, Catullus, to the Shores of Asia Minor” apparently inspired by the above.

Say Goodbye, Catullus, to the Shores of Asia Minor

by Andrea Grenadier 

The end came quietly somewhere in the middle.

It may have begun at a backyard party

with a backhand comment

whispered away so you wouldn’t hear.

Or maybe it was in the kitchen,

busy with another barbecue or crawfish boil,

that something was said.

Your life was filled with events that stirred

from one to the other in tidy steps,

but soon your songs were barren

of the lyric you believed in before tenderness turned.

You lost your desire for the knowing of it,

and it slipped out the back porch door.

During your casting off,

your eyes were fixed to some other horizon.

In your escape, you left everything.

We sat before your favorite painting

in which Catullus, like the artist,

pinned to an endless canvas his siren-call to sea.

Lowering your head over the sphere of your fists,

and whispering “please,”

you prayed for Catullus, for both of you,

to reach shores without shoals, amen.

You despaired, once through the narrow passage,

that coming upon all that’s seen isn’t knowledge of it.

Windstrong, headstrong, salt-stung, uncleansed,

My limbs tired from their labors coursing

the dotted lines of ancient sea maps.

A bag of wind rips open at Bithynia,

and carries me from west to east.

I sang odes at my brother’s tomb, and readied my return.

Through scalding waves I was raised aloft,

my sailors spoke of ports that lay beyond the brilliancies of skies, of seas,

and the earth that came to me in my dreams.

They were raised not to talk about it,

but your daughters whispered prayers

to some god other than ours for your safe return.

They came back to you with the knowing of the unknown,

never having replaced you. They were drawn back

with grace enough to forgive whatever it was, but never say.

In their eyes, you never grew old.

You were as the day you left,

the day you slipped out the back door:

lithe, handsome, brave

before everything fell.

 

Catullus at Lesbia's by Lawrence Alma-Tadema  (British, 1836–1912)

Click to enlarge.