O you gods, cut me a little slack,

have pity on me, poor sod that I am
and make these evil dreams I've startled from
vanish, these lying prophets-
rip their black tongues out.
Sleep that befriends the sick gives me no peace,
avoids my bed like an unfaithful lover.
Heaven alone sends reliable messages,
reveals the future in coded entrails
the Tuscan haruspex deciphers into fact,
that harbinger of light whose words we can trust.
I crave his lucent shape upon my threshold
as I desire Sleep to slip between my sheets.
But dreams, these bums and vagabonds
of the dark,
these dregs of sewer and ditch,
these quacks and humbugs slick with deception,
muggers of rest, burglars of nest eggs,
abusers of our confidence,
O luminous ones, boot them out of the house,
rid the city of these parasites,
relieve my troubled home and mind,
inspire the augur to pronounce infallibly,
cast salt on the fire, stalks to the ground,
help me distinguish the thief from the watchman.

from "Elegies," iv

-translated by David Solway