Colony, o colonia, you long to frolic on the long bridge
And you’re ready and waiting to dance, but fear
The ill-fitting legs of old timber on which
The poor thing stands will fall flat and
Slump into the void-like swamp below.
So may you have an accomplished new bridge,
The best you can imagine,
On which the rites of Salisubsalus can be performed.
Grant me this gift, Colony, it would bring so many smiles.
I am happy for a certain townsman of mine to go
Headlong, head over feet from your bridge into the mud
Where lies the marsh with the deadliest stench
In the whole expanse, and the deepest waters, too.
The man is as backward as they come, his learning no match
For a two-year-old boy jogging on the knee of his sleeping father.
A girl married him at the peak of her fertility,
A girl friskier than a delicate little goat kid
Who merits being guarded more closely than grapes at their blackest,
Yet he allows her to play as she likes, he doesn’t split a hair,
Nor rouse himself on his own account, but just as an alder tree
Hewn by a Ligurian axe lies in a ditch
Experiencing everything as if it were nothing at all,
The fool I am describing sees nothing, hears nothing,
And whether or not he exists himself – that he does not know either.
So now I want to send him headfirst from your bridge,
In the hope it might shake him of a sudden
From his wearying idleness
And leave his lazy mind in the cloying mud,
As a mule does her iron slipper in a sticky chasm.