Carmina

O Colonia, you who long to play on a long bridge and have it readied to dance on, but fear the shaky legs of the little bridge standing on second-hand sticks, lest it tumble flat in the deep swamp; let the bridge be as good as you desire, on which even the Salian dances may be undertaken: for which give to me, Colonia, the gift of greatest laughter. I want a certain townsman of mine to go head over heels from your bridge into the mud, in truth where the brimming, stinking swamp is darkest and an especially deep-sunk mire. He's the biggest ass of a man, lacking the sense of a two-year-old dozing in his father's cradling arm. Although a girl is wedded to him flushed with springtide's bloom (and a girl more dainty than a tender kid needs to be watched with keener diligence than the lush-black grape-bunch), he leaves her to play as she wants, cares not a single hair, nor troubles himself with marital office, but lies like an alder tree felled by a Ligurian hatchet in a ditch, as aware of everything as though no woman were anywhere. Such is my thick-headed friend! he sees not, he hears not. He also knows not who he is himself, or whether he is or is not. Now I want to chuck him head first from your bridge, if it is possible to suddenly rouse this sleepy dullard and to leave behind in the heavy mud his sluggish spirit, as does a mule its iron shoe in the sticky mire.