Sometimes, poems that are really love poems are in a way
hate poems.
And the poet who did this most memorably is, I suppose,
Catullus.
"Odi et amo," I love and I hate.
If you ask me why, I don't know.
But I feel it and I'm tormented, said Catullus.
And you can probably think of a lot of love poems
that are also hate poems in a way.
Here are a couple of rather free translations from Catullus.
You know the Catullus poem that goes
Nulli se dicit mulier mea nubere malle / quam mihi, non si se
Iuppiter ipse petat / dicit: sed mulier cupido quod
dicit amanti, / in vento et rapida scribere oportet aqua.
Which you might translate, my girl
says she'd take no one else as a lover.
No one else, she says.
Even if Jupiter were to coax, says.
But what a girl says to her vehement lover,
write on the giddy wind.
Write on the stream as it flows.
This is one of his love-hate poems.