Saturnalia Satirica
satires wearing different masks
I
Truth
after Catullus
Why are the nicest girls so plain?
Donât laugh. Now that liberty
has turned to licence in Rome,
I canât think of a single woman
whoâs both virtuous and beautiful.
Worse still, those brutes, the men â
they make me sick. Even senators
with good looks, adorable wives,
farms in Umbria, Caesarâs affection,
play fast and loose with the truth.
Let the love-crazed poets versify
the shapely white necks of swans,
persuading rich widows that theirs,
theirs is the best, the truest of arts
for being so charming, so beautiful.
Thatâs Platoâs heady twaddle.
Ha! The sow with hairy breasts
butting her piglets in a bog
is prettier by far than the swan
that paddles a politicianâs pond.
Pigs! Isnât the filthiest old boar
tusking up muck in dung-heaps
more honest than a rhetorician?
What truthâs a poetâs glacĂ©d fig
when offal festers in the Forum?
No, the truth is me, Catullus,
me whom moneymen threaten
and adulterers malign and sue.
Stuff them. The fairest of poems
tell the ugliest of truths.
II
Perfect Sex
after Ovid
Donât shirk the shapeshifter that lurks
inside the human genomeâs walls,
that burns inside a lecherâs blood,
a looting soldierâs balls.
If sex and power best evolve
survival for Charles Darwinâs ape,
is perfect sex, for loveless men,
not that vile thing, a rape?
III
On Philoâs Move to Rome
after Martial
Philoâs joined the scuttling, rat-brained rabble
who flee the whole foul African affair,
and then, throughout their emigrant babble,
exploit the colony they couldnât bear.
IV
Vanity
after Horace
And now, whatâs the matter, Demetrius?
Huddled on a bench, picking at a sandal
and gazing gloomily over smoggy Rome,
you look as miserable as one of your friezes â
one of the better ones, to tell the truth.
A cypress, sooty; a Venus, vandalised âŠ
you couldnât have composed it better.
Iâd call it, Ah woe is me, sans nymphs.
Has someone bust their best Greek chisel,
or chipped the tip off Cupidâs perfect nose?
I bet thatâs what youâd tell me if I asked,
but no, I wonât, you look too forbidding.
I know, I know, youâre not like that at all.
Youâre sensitive, and intelligent, and kind,
and only look depressed and dourly grim
because your patron was seen with a rival.
How you must hate him. The young poseur,
all surface without any gravitas, you said,
dashing off frescoes for the nouveau riche
as if tragedy and the gods had disappeared.
What a life â grovelling for commissions,
riddled with envy, doubt and despair,
and chip, chip, chipping, year after year,
at busts of scroungers and thug politicians.
Quite frankly, I could murder your tutor,
who said you had such hidden potential.
Remember? The disaster began with flattery.
He needed more pupils. Vanity did the rest.
Go and sell onions, start a whore house,
emigrate to the wilds of barbarous Britain â
do anything, Demetrius, except more art!
Why foist your misery on us till you die?
Listen, the toga on your latest Caesar
still looks like a sack. Stop fleeing the truth!
Your appetite for fame will always exceed
the impeccable mediocrity of your gifts.
V
Abstract Art
after Juvenal
I looke...