i don't read Latin

this is my translation of Thomae Campiani's Elegiarum Libre
translated even though i don't read the language it was written in.

True, years add moonlight to your fruit, passing green days
Truth is also aesthetic and soft, Sybil, love.
Creating new infernos in pallid flowers
And seeing, tricky, "Your day, for sooth, erodes."
And voices "arid" and bland seep scarlet echoes;
Alluding voices mimick my nymph, so missed.
You tricked them, simulated suspect, forearmed
Struck dumb by your spectre, more cutting than Love.
It's tactile, tacit ills; taciturn spirits wrote:
This liquor, offensive, quarrelsome days.
Truthfully, I love Venus' parties where who bleeds, soothsays
Lighting insidious fires behind.
Nine takes its immortality, Love saves her special scents
To crudely fix man to his accurate pictures.
"Hey miser," you cry, "You musn't put Mama into labour;"
"Labour," the echoes reply, "To what rogue diva do you refer?
our Sybil?" "I am," you respond: seeping venom
molts ages of truth far from your nibblings:
some danger; and thanks, oh furnace that quickly and temporarily ignites,
I am middlin, no more a frigid poet with only hymns.



this is the original poem:
Thomae Campiani
Elegiarum Libre

Ver anni lunaeque fuit: pars verna diei;
verque erat aetatis dulce, Sybilla, tuae.
carpentem vernos niveo te pollice flores
ut vidi, dixi, "tu dea veris eris."
et vocalis "eris" blanditaque reddidit Eccho;
allusit votis mimica nympha meis.
vixdum nata mihi simulat suspiria, formam
quae dum specto tuam plurima cudit Amor.
si taceo, tacet illa; tacentem spiritus urit:
si loquor, offendor garrulitate deae.
veris amica Venus fetas quoque sanguine venas
incendit flammis insidiosa suis.
nec minus hac immitis Amor sua spicula nostro
pectore crudeli fixit acuta manu.
"heu miser," exclamo, "causa non laedor ab una;"
"una," Eccho resonat; "quam, rogo, diva, refers?
anne Sybillam?" "illam," respondit: sentio vatem
mox ego veridicam fatidicamque nimis:
nam perii, et verno quae coepit tempore flamma,
iam mihi non ullo frigore ponet hyems.


a fun exercise that you should try. pick a poem in a language you don't read. translate it anyway. post your results.

the icing on the tart

then i had a dream where i was at a party and simultaneously flirting with and making out with three different men, none of whom were my husband. one was even a friend (not a close one, someone i've barely seen in the last few years) and he was the one i was most excited about. one of the others was a 21 year old boy who was kind of preppy and had a goatee and was fat, and i would kiss him and he'd kiss back but then he'd apologize and act self-deprecating and say derrogatory stuff about his body. like, "i know i'm so huge it can't be fun to kiss me, but i swear i'll lose weight soon," and i was like, "don't even worry about it, baby," trying to reassure him but he was having none of it. and the third guy was this man i saw in a german movie last week called "enlightenment guarenteed" which was interesting and somewhat amusing but i didn't dig on some of the subtext to the film, but that's besides the point. as i was making out with this guy i was asking him questions about the movie, like, "now wait, did you play the role of ulwe? or were you gunther?" and he would say, "nein, nein, i vas ulwe!" he looked kind of like frasier. it was weird. i woke up feeling somewhat guilty over being such a tarty tart in my dreams, while leon slept next to me, blissfully unaware.