Daniel Mendelsohn - The Complete Poems of C.P. Cavafy

[ 1914 ; 1916]

Here let me stop. Let me too look at Nature for a while.

The morning sea and cloudless sky

a brilliant blue, the yellow shore; all

beautiful and grand in the light.

Here let me stop. Let me fool myself: that these are what I see

(I really saw them for a moment when I first stopped)

instead of seeing, even here, my fantasies,

my recollections, the ikons of pleasure.

[ ? ; 1916]

Because we smashed their statues all to pieces,

because we chased them from their temples—

this hardly means the gods have died.

O land of Ionia, they love you still,

it’s you whom their souls remember still.

And as an August morning’s light breaks over you

your atmosphere grows vivid with their living.

And occasionally an ethereal ephebe’s form,

indeterminate, stepping swiftly,

makes its way along your crested hills.

[ 1891 ; 1896; 1905 ; 1911]

Something they were saying close to me

drew my attention to the entrance of the café.

And I saw the lovely body that looked as if

Eros had made it using all his vast experience:

crafting with pleasure his shapely limbs;

making tall the sculpted build;

crafting the face with emotion

and leaving behind, with the touch of his hands,

a feeling in the brow, the eyes, and the lips.

[ 1904? ; >1915]

The room was threadbare and tawdry,

hidden above that suspect restaurant.

From the window you could see the alley,

which was filthy and narrow. From below

came the voices of some laborers

who were playing cards and having a carouse.

And there, in that common, vulgar bed

I had the body of love, I had the lips,

sensuous and rose-colored, of drunkenness—

the rose of such a drunkenness, that even now

as I write, after so many years have passed!,

in my solitary house, I am drunk again.

[ 1907 ; 1916]

Come back often and take hold of me,

beloved feeling come back and take hold of me,

when the memory of the body reawakens,

and old longing once more passes through the blood;

when the lips and skin remember,

and the hands feel like they’re touching once again.

Come back often and take hold of me at night,

when the lips and skin remember …

[ 1904 ; 1909 ; 1912]

I’d like to talk about that memory …

But by now it’s long died out … as if there’s nothing left:

because it lies far off, in the years of my first youth.

Skin, as if it had been made of jasmine …

That August—was it August?—evening …

I can just recall the eyes: they were, I daresay, blue …

Ah yes, blue: a deep blue, sapphirine.

[ 1914 ; 1914]

Now and then he swears to begin a better life.

But when the night comes on with its own counsels,

its own compromises, and with its promises:

but when the night comes on with a power of its own,

of a body that desires and demands, he returns,

lost, once more to the same fateful pleasure.

[ 1905 ; >1915]

No restraint. I surrendered completely and I went.

To gratifications that were partly real,

partly careening within my mind—

I went in the illuminated night.

And I drank powerful wines, just as

the champions of pleasure drink.

[ 1905 ; 1913]

In a small and empty room, four lone walls,

covered in a cloth of solid green,

a beautiful chandelier burns and glows

and in each and every flame there blazes

a wanton fever, a wanton need.

In the small room, which has been set

aglow by the chandelier’s powerful flames,

the light that appears is no ordinary light.

The pleasure of this heat has not been fashioned

for bodies that too easily take fright.

[ 1895 ; 1914]

Half past twelve. The time has quickly passed

since nine o’clock when I first turned up the lamp

and sat down here. I’ve been sitting without reading,

without speaking. With whom should I speak,

so utterly alone within this house?

The apparition of my body in its youth,

since nine o’clock when I first turned up the lamp,

has come and found me and reminded me

of shuttered perfumed rooms

and of pleasure spent—what wanton pleasure!

And it also brought before my eyes

streets made unrecognizable by time,

bustling city centres that are no more

and theatres and cafés that existed long ago.

The apparition of my body in its youth

came and also brought me cause for pain:

deaths in the family; separations;

the feelings of my loved ones, the feelings of

those long dead which I so little valued.

Half past twelve. How the time has passed.

Half past twelve. How the years have passed.

[ 1917 ; 1918]

The years of my youth, my pleasure-bent existence—

how plainly do I see their meaning now.

What useless, foolish regrets …

But I ­didn’t see their meaning then.

In the dissolute life I led in my youth

my poetry’s designs took shape;

the boundaries of my art were drawn.

That is why the regrets were never firm.

And my resolutions—to master myself, to change—

would keep up for two weeks at the most.

[ 1895 ; 1917/1918]

On a chariot of white, drawn by four

snow-white mules caparisoned in silver,

I have arrived at Latmus from Miletus. I sailed over

from Alexandria in a purple trireme to perform

holy rites for Endymion, sacrifices and libations.

Behold the statue. With rapture I now look upon

the fabled beauty of Endymion. My slaves

empty panniers of jessamine; and well-omened acclamations

have awakened the pleasure of ancient days.

[ 1895 ; 1916]

They ­hadn’t seen, in Delphi, such beautiful gifts in centuries

as those that were sent by the two, the Ptolemies,

the rival brother kings. Ever since the priests accepted them,

though, they’ve been worried about the oracle. To frame it

with finesse they’ll need all of their expertise:

which of the two, two such as these, must be displeased.

And they convene at night, secretly,

to confer about the Lagid family.

But look, the envoys have come back. They take their leave.

Returning to Alexandria, they say. They no longer have

need of oracles. The priests are overjoyed to hear this

(it’s understood they’ll keep the fabulous gifts)

but they’re also bewildered in the extreme,

clueless as to what this sudden lack of interest means.

For yesterday the envoys had grim news of which priests are unaware:

At Rome the oracle was handed down; destinies were meted there.

[ 1915 ; 1918]

The palace is in tears, the king’s in tears,