Parody Contest Poems: A Beloved's Response to Catullus, by Catherine Meale

Catherine Meale is an avid reader of poetry and fiction. She grew up in Florida and studied Classics, both of which seem to find their way into her work. She is particularly interested in poets who write love better than they live it.

A Beloved’s Response to Catullus

You hate. You love. I have not asked.
It is the doing, not the being done.
Did you not know?
You are torturer, not tormented.

***

Catullus 85 

(the poem to which the one above responds, original Latin followed by English translation)

Ōdī et amō. Quārē id faciam fortasse requīris.
Nesciŏ, sed fierī sentiō et excrucior.^[1]

I hate and I love. Why I do this, perhaps you ask.
I know not, but I feel it happening and I am tortured.