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An April Day
After Ovid
April. The rush back to the car
Between the showers, laughing,
Reminds us we are Venus’s.
She blesses us this month, this hour.
Hers is the world entire.
It’s her hand that draws spectacular
Colours in the oily puddles
That only you could find romantic,
Her hand in the rain, in the breeze,
Her gentle hand we feel
When we bend towards one
Another for a kiss.
She is the origin,
The source of all that’s good.
She made the gods indeed,
And made the seeds that made the trees
And sparked in them the yearning
For the air above the lifeless earth,
As she inspired our forbears
To find a mate to couple with.
(Think of the choric rows behind us,
Shuffling boisterously
In the convivial gloom
Before they’re forced to cross
The River of Forgetfulness:
Too giddily perhaps—
Though she emboldens them
To pull on the thread that was their lives—
They rehearse their escapades,
The acts that brought us here
To this very moment, now,
When I taste your mouth and glimpse
Your soft, white, unblemished breast
Through a gap in your blouse
As you wriggle out of your wet coat.)
You settle.
It’s Venus’s
Finger that traces that shape
Along the back of your tired hand.
Who else but Venus, with her generosity,
Could conjure up that charm of finches
Flashing in the cherry-blossom?
She abhors loneliness.
The thick-skulled mountain goat
Will bite the doe, and charge at it,
In its ignorance—Venus
Softens his heart and now
He curls protectively around his mate
When the first snows come.
The savage bull whom
All the pastures fear, she tames too
When it comes to love:
See how he sidles towards the cow,
The picture of civility.
Because she blesses couples,
The seas teem with fishes.
She straightened our twisted tongues.
Though a serenade of love denied
Was our primeval song,
It pleased her that we sang it.
Who is to say that ache
Still lingers in the words we use,
Like an annotated calendar
Recording disappointments?
But we wish to satisfy
And so offer cries out into the dark,
Or to today’s sky, its towering clouds,
To the disputing gulls
Wheeling over the chimneys,
And find some consolation there.
Who would deny her worship?
Everywhere, heads are lowered
When her name’s pronounced,
Her statues’ feet polished
By the kisses of her supplicants
Packing every temple.
She bled from a spear wound
To her fair hand in Rome’s defence;
Bore Athena’s grudge and Hera’s
Both for the judgement of Paris (bliss
When he passed her the apple:
She is not above envy or delight);
Guaranteed our line,
Her blood still racing
Through our throbbing veins.
Let your bedrooms be
Her temple, Rome, your love-cries, your
Pleasure-groans her hymns of praise.
This is our season, and Venus’s.
The fields sparkle, the grasses stretch
Up through the softened earth,
The vines burst into bud.
Every word we speak
Seems honestly and freshly said
And your hand in mine seems true
As it is warm, delightful.
It is Spring and she encourages
The curved ships to cross
Their native seas, no longer
To fear the threat of Winter,
What it takes from us, its bitterness.
Ov. Fasti. 4.85-132.
Rostock
After Ovid
I was lost, my dear, with no-one to guide my way—
The early hours, wind whipping in from the sea,
The ropes slapping the sides of the rusting ships
That moaned, straining at their anchor chains—
When I came upon a gang of lads
Who stalked the docks waiting for men like me.
“You buying or selling,” one asked. “He’s buying for sure,”
Another replied, pouting, his hands on his hips.
Scowling, a third flicked open his shirt
To show his tattooed torso and pierced nipples.
There were more of them and they circled me.
One sniffed the nape of my neck. “I smell women
And I smell drink and I smell fear,” he hissed.
“Am I right to be afraid?” I said.
A hand then gripped my throat. “We are gods
And we’ve chosen to come to earth for you!
She’s waiting, your whore, reeking of perfume.
She had a candle lit but it’s gone out.
Her knickers on the floor, half asleep
She calls your name, livening up her cunt
With one careful black-nailed finger-tip.
What does it tell you then that you are here?”
He tightened his choking grip. “We will let you go
At the price of just your wallet now
And these bruises we’re making on your neck …”
And then they were gone, all clattering boot noise
And shouted-back threats. I found at last the route
Back through the deserted squares and as the night
Leaked away I came to your sleeping house.
“Someone help,” I whispered to your door.
“I will wait for you to see me, and be true.
Look at what I’ve earned for you,” I said,
My fingers grappling at my necklace of welts.
Your door was locked, but who’s to know what dreams
You had as I waited watching from the street:
Perhaps you dream of a good morning kiss
From a sometime prince who sings sweet songs
And would cradle you in the darkness;
Perhaps you dream of a strange animal
Following you that snarls and snaps and bites,
Will not be collared but will not be frightened off.
Prop. 2.29a
Alexander Gaul worked, until his recent retirement, in academic administration at a university in the South of Ireland. These poems form part of a longer verse narrative called ‘The End of the Affair’, the story of a love affair told through versions of poems by Propertius, Catullus, Horace, Tibullus, Ovid and others.
Copyright © 2025 by Alexander Gaul, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of Copyright law. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the author.
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