Desires
Like beautiful bodies of the dead, who had not grown old
and they shut them with tears, in a magnificent mausoleum,
with roses at the head and jasmine at the feet --
that is how desires look that have passed
without fultillment; without one of them having achieved
a night of sensual delight, or a moonlit morn.
poem by Constantine P. Cavafy
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I've Brought To Art
I sit in a mood of reverie.
I've brought to Art desires and sensations:
things half-glimpsed,
faces or lines, certain indistinct memories
of unfulfilled love affairs.
Let me submit to Art:
Art knows how to shape forms of Beauty,
almost imperceptibly completing life,
blending impressions, blending day with day.
poem by Constantine P. Cavafy
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On Hearing of Love
On hearing about great love, respond, be moved
like an aesthete. Only, fortunate as you've been,
remember how much your imagination created for you.
This first, and then the rest
that you experienced and enjoyed in your life:
the less great, the more real and tangible.
Of loves like these you were not deprived.
poem by Constantine P. Cavafy
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Days of 1903
I never found them again -- the things so quickly lost....
the poetic eyes, the pale
face.... in the dusk of the street....
I never found them again -- the things acquired quite by chance,
that I gave up so lightly;
and that later in agony I wanted.
The poetic eyes, the pale face,
those lips, I never found again.
poem by Constantine P. Cavafy
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Long Ago
I’d like to speak of this memory…
but it’s so faded now…as though nothing is left—
because it was so long ago, in my early adolescent years.
A skin as though of jasmines…
that August evening— was it August?—
I can still just recall the eyes: blue, I think they were…
Ah yes, blue: a sapphire blue.
poem by Constantine P. Cavafy
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Anna Dalassené
In the golden bull that Alexios Comnenos issued
to prominently honor his mother,
the very sagacious Lady Anna Dalassené --
distinguished in her works, in her ways --
there are many words of praise:
here let us convey of them
a beautiful, noble phrase
"Those cold words 'mine' or 'yours' were never spoken."
poem by Constantine P. Cavafy
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Voices
Ideal and beloved voices
of those who are dead, or of those
who are lost to us like the dead.
Sometimes they speak to us in our dreams;
sometimes in thought the mind hears them.
And with their sound for a moment return
other sounds from the first poetry of our life --
like distant music that dies off in the night.
poem by Constantine P. Cavafy
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You Didn't Understand
Vacuous Julian had the following to say
about our religious beliefs: 'I read, I understood,
I condemned'. He thought we'd be devastated
by that 'condemned', the silly ass.
Witticisms like that don't get by with us Christians.
Our quick reply: 'You read but didn't understand;
had you understood, you wouldn't have condemned.'
poem by Constantine P. Cavafy
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The Souls Of Old Men
Inside their worn, tattered bodies
sit the souls of old men.
How unhappy the poor things are
and how bored by the pathetic life they live.
How they tremble for fear of losing that life, and how much
they love it, those befuddled and contradictory souls,
sitting -half comic and half tragic-
inside their old, threadbare skins.
poem by Constantine P. Cavafy
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Che Fece
For some people the day comes
when they have to declare the great Yes
or the great No. It's clear at once who has the Yes
ready within him; and saying it,
he goes from honor to honor, strong in his conviction.
He who refuses does not repent. Asked again,
he'd still say no. Yet that no-the right no-
drags him down all his life.
poem by Constantine P. Cavafy
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