XXXVII

Seedy inn and you, its motley crowd,

Nine pillars from the Brothers with traveller hats,

You think you are the only ones with cocks,

The only ones entitled to fuck this girl or that

And to think the rest of us billy goats?

Or, since a hundred or two hundred of you fools

Are forever sitting there do you think

I wouldn’t dare to penetrate two hundred

Spectators at once?

Think again. For I will scrawl penises

All over the front of your inn.

For my girl, who fled my embrace,

Loved as much as no other girl will be loved,

For whom I fought great and glorious battles,

Sits in that very place. All you wellborn and wealthy men

Love her, and even – here’s the shameful part –

All the insignificant and byway-seeking adulterers, too.

You, above all the others, one of the hairy ones,

Rabbity son of Spain,

Egnatius, who feigns nobility with a thick beard

And teeth brushed with Iberian urine.