Snog me lots

(After Catullus)

Kiss me once, kiss me twice, 

kiss me here, it's very nice,

snog me lots, snog me more, 

wash me up on love's lost shore,

counting kisses like grains of sand,

spilling from your gentle hands,

spread your kisses like they're atoms

sink them where the coral is vivid

deeper than jealousy can fathom

confound the reckoning of the wicked

(So let us live and love, my Lesbia,

and reckon all the smug, self-satisfied, snivelling, 

senile snipes and gripes of gossip gathering about us

at less than a farthing! 

                                     The Sun dies and can return,

like a glittering coin tossed a thousand times. 

To us is given just a single brief glimpse of light 

before we must turn our face away, 

and be cast into perpetual night. 

So give me a thousand kisses, and then give me a hundred

and then another thousand, and then a second hundred

and then yet another thousand, even then another hundred.

And then, 

              then, 

                     only then, 

                             once we have shared so very, 

                                           very many thousands of kisses

Bin the count! 

                      So that even we don’t know how many there are

And then no-one else can try to defend their ill-will towards us

by knowing the extent of the incalculable, scandalous wealth of our kisses.

Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus,

rumoresque senum severiorum

omnes unius aestimemus assis!

soles occidere et redire possunt;

nobis, cum semel occidit brevis lux,

nox est perpetua una dormienda.

da mi basia mille, deinde centum,

dein mille altera, dein secunda centum,

deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum;

dein, cum milia multa fecerimus,

conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus,

aut ne quis malus invidere possit

cum tantum sciat esse basiorum.)