How many kisses satisfy,
How many are enough and more,
You ask me, Lesbia. I reply,
As many as the Libyan sands
Sprinkling the Cyrenaic shore
Where silphium grows, between the places
Where old King Battus’s tomb stands
And Jupiter Ammon has his shrine
In Siwa’s sweltering oasis;
As many as the stars above
That in the dead of midnight shine
Upon men’s secrecies of love.
When he has all those kisses, mad-
Hungry Catullus will have had
Enough to slake his appetite
So many that sharp eyes can’t tell
The number, and the tongues of spite
Are too confused to form a spell.
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