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

The fulfillment of their illicit pleasure

is accomplished. They’ve risen from the bed,

and dress themselves quickly without speaking.

They emerge separately, covertly, from the house. And while

they walk rather uneasily in the street, it seems

as if they suspect that something about them betrays

what kind of bed they’d fallen into just before.

Nonetheless, how the artist’s life has gained.

Tomorrow, the day after, or through the years he’ll write

powerful lines, that here was their beginning.

[ 1915 ; 1921]

Oh I’m not put out because my chariot’s

wheel was smashed, and I’m down one silly win.

I shall pass the night among fine wines

and lovely roses. All Antioch is mine.

I am the most exalted of young men.

I’m Balas’s weakness, the one he worships.

Tomorrow, you’ll see, they’ll say the race wasn’t proper.

(But if I were vulgar, and had secretly given the order—

they’d even have placed my crippled chariot first, the flatterers.)

[ 1916? ; 1921]

The aging of my body and my looks

is a wound from a terrible knife.

I have no means whatsoever to endure it.

Unto you I turn, Art of Poetry,

you who know something of drugs;

of attempts to numb pain, in Imagination and Word.

It’s a wound from a terrible knife.—

Bring on your drugs, Art of Poetry,

which make it impossible—for a while—to feel the wound.

[ 1918? ; 1921]

The theme, “The Character of Demaratus,”

which Porphyry has suggested to him in conversation,

the young scholar outlined as follows

(intending, afterwards, to flesh it out rhetorically).

“At first the courtier of King Darius, and then

a courtier of King Xerxes;

and now accompanying Xerxes and his army,

to vindicate himself at last: Demaratus.

“A great injustice had been done to him.

He was the son of Ariston. Shamelessly

his enemies had bribed the oracle.

Nor did they fail to deprive him of his throne;

but when at last he yielded, and decided

to resign himself to living as a private person

they had to go and insult him before the people,

they had to go and humiliate him, in public, at the festival.

“And so it is that he serves Xerxes with such great zeal.

Accompanying the enormous Persian army

he too will make his return to Sparta;

and, a king once more, how swiftly

he will drive him out, will degrade

that conniving Leotychides.

“And so his days pass by, full of concerns:

giving the Persians counsel, explaining to them

what they need to do to conquer Greece.

“Many worries, much reflection, which is why

the days of Demaratus are so dreary.

Many worries, much reflection, which is why

Demaratus doesn’t have a moment’s pleasure;

since pleasure isn’t what he’s feeling

(it’s not; he won’t acknowledge it;

how can he call it pleasure? it’s the acme of his misfortune)

when everything reveals to him quite clearly

that the Greeks will emerge victorious.”

[ 1904 ; 1911 ; 1921]

I’m sitting and musing. I brought to Art

longings and feelings— some half-glimpsed

faces or lines; some uncertain mem’ries

of unfulfilled loves. Let me submit to it.

It knows how to shape the Form of Beauty;

almost imperceptibly filling out life,

piecing together impressions, piecing together the days.

[ 1921 ; 1921]

He remained Ammonius Saccas’s student for two years;

but of philosophy and of Saccas he grew bored.

Afterward he went into politics.

But he gave it up. The Prefect was a fool;

and those around him solemn, pompous stiffs;

their Greek horribly uncouth, the wretches.

His curiosity was aroused,

a bit, by the Church: to be baptized,

to pass as a Christian. But he quickly

changed his mind. He’d surely get in a row

with his parents, so ostentatiously pagan:

and they’d immediately put an end—an awful thought—

to his extremely generous allowance.

Still, he had to do something. He became an habitué

of the depraved houses of Alexandria,

of every secret den of debauchery.

In this, fortune had been kind to him:

had given him a form of highest comeliness.

And he delighted in that heavenly gift.

For at least another ten years yet

his beauty would endure. After that—

perhaps to Saccas he would go once more.

And if in the meantime the old man had died,

he’d go to some other philosopher or sophist;

someone suitable can always be found.

Or in the end, it was possible he’d even return

to politics—admirably mindful

of his family traditions,

duty to one’s country, and other pomposities of that sort.

[ 1921 ; 1921]

On this mixing-bowl of the purest silver—

which was made for the home of Heracleides,

where great elegance always is the rule—

note the stylish blooms, and the brooks, the thyme;

and in the middle I put a beautiful young man,

naked, sensuous; he still keeps one leg,

just one, in the water.— O Memory, I have begged

to find in you the best of guides, that I might make

the face of the youth I loved as it really was.

This has proved to be very difficult since

some fifteen years have passed since the day on which

he fell, a soldier, in the defeat at Magnesia.

[ 1903 ; 1912 ; 1921]

You brave, who fought and fell in glory:

who had no fear of those who’d conquered everywhere.

You blameless, even if Diaeus and Critolaus blundered.

Whensoever the Greeks should want to boast,

“Such are the men our race produces,” is what they’ll say

about you. That’s how marvelous the praise for you will be.—

Written in Alexandria by an Achaean:

in the seventh year of Ptolemy, the “Chickpea.”

[ 1922 ; 1922]

The young Antiochene said to the king,

“In my heart there beats a single precious hope:

the Macedonians again, Antiochus Epiphanes,

the Macedonians are back in the great fight again.

If only they would win— I’ll give to anyone who wants them

the horses and the lion, the Pan made out of coral,

and the elegant mansion, and the gardens in Tyre,

and everything else you’ve given me, Antiochus Epiphanes.”

Maybe he was moved a little bit, the king.

But he recalled at once his father and his brother,

and so made no response. Some eavesdropper might

go and repeat something.— Anyway, as expected,

at Pydna there swiftly came the horrible conclusion.

[ 1911? ; 1922 ; 1922]

In an old book—about a hundred years old—

I found, neglected among the leaves,

a watercolour with no signature.

It must have been the work of a very powerful artist.

It bore the title “Representation of Love.”

But “—of the love of extreme sensualists” would have been more fitting.