Here in North Carolina, the sap is rising. The sun is shining, the wind is blowing soft and fragrant. I'm wakened in the morning by a chorus of songbirds and go to sleep at night safe in the knowledge that tomorrow is going to be still warmer and finer than today. Meanwhile, reports from back home tell me that the daffodils are out there too, that the snowdrops have come and gone and that even if the rain might still be falling, it has at least lost its sting. In short - as I'm sure you don't need me to tell you - it's spring.
In recent years quite a few of the old certainties about spring's arrival have disappeared along with the ice caps. Even so, the season's capacity to inspire over-enthusiastic hymns of praise remains undiminished - the above paragraph being a case in point. In fact, if I didn't know better, I'd be tempted to write a poem about spring right now - and I'm sure thousands of others have felt a similar impulse.
There's no way of measuring these things, but if it were possible, I'd be prepared to wager good money that spring is the most inspiring season. Just google "spring poems" to see what I mean - and how many of the very best poets have had a crack at summing up its pleasures.
The songs of spring are quite literally beyond number, but as far as I'm concerned none has surpassed the simple elegant beauty of Catullus. Those unfamiliar with the poem - and those who want to remind themselves - can find it here (with numerous translations). It's more than 2,000 years since the Roman poet last felt the sweet breath of the west wind on his face, but it's his evocation of the excitement and urgency it brings that still strikes a chord with me. Even more resonant - especially now, when I'm on my own travels - is his gentle closing acknowledgement that seeking new pastures always means leaving something behind.
Like many others before me, when I'm wrapped up in Catullus's gorgeous eloquence, I feel like we are kindred spirits. It's an illusion, of course. There is a huge gulf between us in culture, technology and time, not to mention social standing (only the most powerful Americans could have anything akin to his stature in the world as a member of the Roman ruling class). All the same - and perhaps all the more - it's a mark of his skill as a poet that reading him in the year 2007 still feels like a heart-to-heart with a soul brother.
Paradoxically, even though Catullus is the Roman poet with whom it's possible to feel the most intimately acquainted, most of his life is actually shrouded in mystery. We can't even say when or where he was born or died with any certainty. The only details we have of his life are tantalising and spare: a few vague whispers about affairs and indiscretions, a rumour of a public fight with the all-powerful Julius Caesar, an official appointment to the east of the Empire. Even the poetry we have is fragmented and cut all too short.
Fortunately, however, what remains is more than strong enough to stand alone. For those with an understanding of Latin, part of the appeal of Catullus is his dazzling wordplay and virtuoso rhythmical trickery, but even if all that is necessarily lost in translation he still transfers beautifully into English. His poems have the potential to strike you right in the heart, the soul and (this being one of the most brutally direct poets of all time) the balls (or equivalent). A read through his all too slim body of work is a heady emotional journey. The poems he wrote to his not-so-coy mistress Lesbia are loving, hateful, lustful, joyful, enraged, spiteful and finally deranged. He's rude, horny and so brutal in his insults that it was almost 2,000 years before anyone dared to translate him properly. Meanwhile, in sharp contrast with this cruelty, is his unsurpassable tenderness: the joy in homecoming and finally, and most impressive of all, the sadness of parting...
And that seems as good a place as any to leave this most intimate and still most distant of poets. Ave atque vale, or as The Beatles translated it, Hello Goodbye.
