Complete Poems (20 page)
Authors: C.P. Cavafy
Which is why I think I’m totally
qualified to be of service to this country,
my beloved homeland, Syria.
In whatever job they give me I’ll try hard
to be useful to this country. That’s my plan.
And if they trip me up again with their machinations—
we know who our fine friends are; enough said for now;
if they trip me up, am I to blame?
I’ll solicit Zabinas first off,
and if that fool doesn’t appreciate me
I’ll go to his archrival, Grypus.
And if that idiot doesn’t take me either,
off I go at once to Hyrcanus.
One of the three, in any case, is bound to want me.
And my conscience isn’t troubled by the fact
that I’m so completely indifferent to my choice.
All three of them harm Syria just the same.
But, given what I’ve come to, am I to blame?
I’m just a wretch who’s trying to get by.
The almighty gods should have taken the trouble
to create a fourth man, who was good.
With pleasure I’d have gone along with him.
[1930]
“What distillation is there to be found, from magic
herbs,” an aesthete said,
“what distillation, made according to the formulas
of ancient Greco-Syrian magicians,
that could, for one day (if its power can’t
last more than that), or just a little while,
bring me back the age of twenty-three
again; bring my friend at twenty-two years old
back to me again—his beauty, and his love.
“What distillation is there to be found, made according to the formulas
of ancient Greco-Syrian magicians
that, in keeping with this movement back in time,
might even bring us back our little room once more.”
[1931]
“Alexander son of Philip and the Greeks except the Lacedaemonians”—
We can very easily imagine
how utterly indifferent they were in Sparta
to that inscription. “Except the Lacedaemonians,”
but of course. Spartans weren’t for
being led around and ordered about
like prized retainers. Anyway
a panhellenic expedition without
a king of Sparta taking the command
wouldn’t have seemed of much account to them.
Oh most certainly “except the Lacedaemonians.”
That’s one point of view. Without a doubt.
So: except the Lacedaemonians at Granicus;
and at Issus afterwards; and in the final
battle, where they swept away the fearsome army
which the Persians had assembled at Arbela:
which had set out from Arbela for victory, and was swept away.
And from that amazing panhellenic expedition,
crowned with victory, everywhere acclaimed,
famed throughout the world, illustrious
as no other has been illustrious,
without any rival: we emerged,
a new world that was Greek, and great.
We: the Alexandrians, the Antiochenes,
the Selucians, and the numerous
other Greeks of Egypt and of Syria,
and in Media, and in Persia, and all the others.
With their far–flung realms,
with the nuanced policy of judicious integration.
And the Common Greek Language
which we’ve taken as far as Bactria, as far as the Indians.
Let’s talk about Lacedaemonians now!
[
1916?
; 1931]
That year he found himself without a job;
and so he made a living from cards,
from backgammon, and what he borrowed.
A job, at three pounds a month, at a little stationer’s,
had been offered to him.
But he turned it down without the slightest hesitation.
It wouldn’t do. It wasn’t a wage
for him, a young man with some education, twenty-five years of age.
Two or three shillings a day was what he’d get, sometimes not.
What could the boy possibly earn from cards and backgammon
in the coffeehouses of his class, the common ones,
however cleverly he played, however stupid the partners he chose?
And loans—then there were those loans.
It was rare that he’d manage a crown, more often it was half;
sometimes he’d settle for shillings.
Sometimes for a week, occasionally more,
when he was spared the horror of staying up till dawn,
he’d cool off at the baths, with a swim at morning.
His clothes were in a dreadful state.
There was one suit that he would always wear,
a suit of a very faded cinnamon hue.
O days of the summer of nineteen-hundred eight,
your vision, quite exquisitely, was spared
that very faded cinnamon-colored suit.
Your vision preserved him
as he was when he undressed, when he flung off
the unworthy clothes, and the mended underwear.
And he’d be left completely nude; flawlessly beautiful; a thing of wonder.
His hair uncombed, springing back;
his limbs a little colored by the sun
from his nakedness in the morning at the baths, and at the seashore.
[
1921?
; 1931]
We were mystified in Antioch when we learned
of the latest antics Julian had got up to.
Apollo had laid it all out for him, at Daphne!
He didn’t want to give an oracle (we couldn’t care less!),
he had no intention of speaking prophetically, unless they first
purified his sanctuary in Daphne.
They irritate him, he explained—the dead, his neighbors.
In Daphne there are many burials.—
One among those who’d been entombed there
was the miraculous—the glory of our church—
the sainted, the all-triumphant martyr Babylas.
He’s the one the false god hinted at, the one he fears.
As long as he senses him nearby, he dares not
issue any oracles: not a word.
(They tremble before our martyrs, those false gods do.)
The impious Julian girded himself for action:
he lost his temper and kept shouting: “Dig him up, move him,
take him away, this Babylas, at once.
You there, do you hear? Apollo’s irritated.
Dig him up, take hold of him at once.
Exhume him, put him wherever you like.
Take him out, get him out of here. You think I’m joking?
Apollo said his sanctuary must be purified.”
We took it out, we took the holy relic somewhere else.
We took it out, we took it in love and in honor.
And since then, the sanctuary has done so
very
well.
Without the slightest delay, an enormous fire
broke out: a terrifying fire:
and the sanctuary and Apollo both burned up.
The idol is ash: something to sweep up with the trash.
Julian exploded and he put it about—
what else could he do?—that the fire was set
by the Christians, by us. Let him talk.
It hasn’t been proved. Let him go and talk.
The essential thing is that he exploded.
[
1932
–
1933
; 1935]
CONTENTS OF
THE SENGOPOULOS NOTEBOOK
(Poems already published in
Poems 1905–1915
are italicized.)
Imagined voices, and beloved, too,
of those who died, or of those who are
lost unto us like the dead.
Sometimes in our dreams they speak to us;
sometimes in its thought the mind will hear them.
And with their sound for a moment there return
sounds from the first poetry of our life—
like music, in the night, far off, that fades away.
[
1894
; 1894;
1903
; 1904]
Like the beautiful bodies of the dead who never aged,
shut away inside a splendid tomb by tearful mourners
with roses at their head and jasmine at their feet—
that’s what longings look like when they’ve passed away
without being fulfilled, before they could be made complete
by just one of pleasure’s nights, or one of its shimmering mornings.
[
1904
; 1904/5]
The days of the future stand before us
like a row of little lighted candles—
golden, warm, and vibrant little candles.
The days that have gone by remain behind us,
a melancholy line of candles now snuffed out;
the closest still give off their smoke,
cold candles, melted down, bent out of shape.
I don’t want to see them; their appearance saddens me,
and I’m saddened, too, to recall their former light.
I look in front of me, at my lighted candles.
I don’t want to turn around lest I see and tremble at
how quickly the darkened line is growing longer,
how quickly the snuffed-out candles multiply.
[
1893
; 1899]
In the noisy café, right in the middle,
an old man sits bent over the table;
his newspaper in front of him, with no one for company.
And in his contempt for his wretched old age,
he thinks how very little he enjoyed
the years when he had strength, and wit, and beauty.
He knows he’s aged a lot: he feels it, sees it.
And even so, the moment when he was young seems
like yesterday. How brief a span, how brief a span.
And he brooded on the way that Prudence had duped him:
and how he’d always trusted—so stupidly!—
the lie she told: “Tomorrow. You have lots of time.”
He remembers the impulses he bridled; and how
much joy he sacrificed. His foolish caution, now,
is mocked by each lost opportunity.
… But all this thinking, all this remembering
makes the old man dizzy. And leaning
on the table in the café, he falls asleep.
[
1894
; 1897]
The sea took into her depths a sailor’s life.—
Unaware, his mother goes and lights
a taper before the image of Our Lady
that the weather might be fair, and his return speedy—
while at the wind she always strains her ears.
But as she prays the ikon hears,
solemn and full of mourning,
knowing that the son she awaits won’t be returning.
[
1896
; 1898]
Inside their old bodies, so wasted away,
the souls of old men sit around.
How woebegone the poor things are, and
how bored by the wretched life they live.
How afraid they are of losing it and how they love it,
these bewildered and contradictory
souls, which sit around—tragicomic—
inside their old hides, so worn away.
[
1898
; 1901]
To Theocritus one day the young
poet Eumenes was complaining:
“By now two years have passed since I’ve been writing
and I’ve only done a single idyll so far.
It’s the only work that I’ve completed.
O woe is me, I see how high it is,
Poetry’s stairway; very high indeed.
And from where I stand, on this first step,
I shall never ascend. Unhappy me!”
Theocritus replied: “The words you speak
are unbecoming; they are blasphemies.
Even if you are on the first step, you ought
to be dignified and happy.
To have got this far is no small thing;
what you have done is a glorious honor.
Even that first step, even the first,
is very far removed from the common lot.
In order for you to proceed upon this stair
you must claim your right to be
a citizen of the city of ideas.
It is difficult, and rare as well,
to be entered into that city’s rolls.
In its agora you’ll find Legislators
whom no mere adventurer can fool.
To have got this far is no small thing;
what you have done is a glorious honor.”
[
1895
; 1899]
It’s we who interrupt the work of the immortals,
we hasty, inexperienced creatures of a moment.
In the palaces of Eleusis and of Phthia
Demeter and Thetis initiate good works
amidst high flames and dense smoke.
But Metaneira always comes rushing in from the
royal halls, her hair disheveled, terrified,
and Peleus always takes fright, and interferes.