Complete Poems

It makes her pregnant. But she brings forth a thousand pains,
A thousand deaths. I depart. And whatever is an adversary to this,
I order to be brought by a servant. I agree with the same man,
The name having been changed. He praises it nonetheless. Furthermore,
They irritate the timid if they fear that anyone is idling.
This has led me to the borders of a doubtful life.
May poverty be wealth? Should having nothing be opulence?
You will live safe in no other way. Thus a pack of dogs
Barks at you. It will finish you, unless you redeem yourself quickly with a morsel.
Choose, wretched one, whether you prefer to perish starving,
Or to be gnawed while full. In the middle, finally, nothing is safe:
Nothing even in the extremes. If iron is lacking, yet the files themselves
Gnaw upon themselves. Never has a comedy moved
More thickly, or have crowded theaters received laughter,
Than two lawyers [contending] over their own affairs, when they struggle
With bitter hatreds, with those matters in dispute.
Then you would believe doctors to be braying from a goatskin.
While they rage, swelling with pride over their primary seat,
And their precedence: and while they capture Latin words:
Meanwhile the sick man, whose affair is being turned, and for whom
They stand by hired, in vain condemning these contests,
Having detested their complaints with an exhausted voice:
He dies, testifying to their madness with an unknown death.

Concerning Lucretius.

I laughed, Brassacus, at him whom I revere, lately singing
Of the principles, and of others, and yet others, in order, their motions,
Pouring out milky rivers from his nectar-sweet mouth.
That all things were separated by no design at their first
Motion. And that, in their advance, whatever chance was rash,
It assigned a seat, and those things obtained it by lot: nor to any [god]
Does there exist now, nor has there ever existed, any power over it.
But by their own weight, the earth separates the heavens
From the center, just as once clouds [arise] from deep fountains.