And you thought our generation had the copyright on angry and over-sexed diatribes? No way. Check out Catullus’s poem that was and is so racy it rarely gets translated and published.

We’re not afraid of racy. And thankfully, neither is poet and translator G.M. Palmer.

Catullus 16

I’ll fuck your ass and rape your face

Cock-gobbling, power-bottom poets

Who say my fancy, fluffy measures

Make me a flaccid, fluffing fag.

A pious poet should be pure

But his poems don’t have to be.

Poetry should taste like sex.

Its meaty words can lick and flit

Their tongues to scratch the itch that lifts

Not just young boys but wrinkled men

Whose cocks are as curdled as their lines.

Because you’ve read my kissing poems

You think you can make my mouth your cunt?

I’ll fuck your ass and rape your face!