Propertius carmen XVI draft 2

'Once I was cast open for massy triumphs,
Like the door of Tarpeia, so famously chaste.
Those gold-inlaid cars thundered right past my porch,
Mildewed with the streams from prisoners’ tears.
Now each night I’m scarred up by the wasters’ scraping,
As their base knuckles hammer, I always complain,
My voice close to choking through putrid love-garlands,
Or sputtering torches, whose bearers she’s quenched.

'I can’t bear, nor yet bar, her bordello soirees,
Those wits on her guestlist who smirk at my frame,
But nor can she pretend a frail shred of honour,
For in foulness she can keep in step with the times.
Penned ‘twixt truth and truth that lead moan pins me down,
A sadder blocked suitor – long queuing, long lost.

'I can never unwind, hinges neither, by him,
For his words are as bitter as (I confess) sweet.

'"So, door, crueller door, at bottom, than she,
Why to me are you dumb, granite-hard, slammed clam-tight?
Why not loosen your latch and requite my amours?
Don’t you know what to do when you’re slipped a good word?
Won’t this appeal of mine be ceased, ever,
By any grant, except a stony, rough rest?
I lie in night's caress, I know the stars’ grasp,
I’m grieved by cold daybreak, coldly grieving for me -
You alone keep inhuman, never lean to man’s comfort,
Unfazed, ever kind as a Trappist confessor...

'"O, if only my whimper, thrust through some covert leak,
Might strike first at her lobe, hammer, anvil, and drum!
Allow then for the chance that rock Sicily's softlier,
That she puts to scrap iron, obsolesces steel,
She could not yet manage to dim those bright eyes,
Her heart would lurch up in raped sighs and wrenched tears.

'"But softly now – soft she is draped on his shoulder,
And my words whip up only a slight nightly breeze.
If you’re not my sole block, you are yet the nearest,
As you’ll never be conquered by my tributes, door.

I’m not like the others – for I never mocked you
In a lampoon – no poet so honoured dull wood;
So why do you freeze me out, rasping and pleading,
As I keep up my regular back-alley vigils?
I’ve made, you should know, you such ground-breaking poems,
Stooped down, I have kissed your worn step’s every inch,
I’ve brought you prized offerings, with low devotion!"

'Stuff like that, known by rote to all you lovestruck wretches,
He gasps out when he’s finished me to puzzled larks.
So what with her teasing, and the lover ever
Soaking cheek, step and air, I foresee no end.'