Constantine P. Cavafy Poems

His attractive face a bit pale,
his brown eyes looking tired, dazed,
twenty-five years old but could be taken for twenty,
with something of the artist in the way he dresses
-the colour of his tie, shape of his collar
he drifts aimlessly down the street,
as though still hypnotized by the illicit pleasure,
the very illicit pleasure he's just experienced.
...

His subject, 'The Character of Dimaratos',
which Porphyry proposed to him in conversation
was outlined by the young sophist as follows
(he planned to develop it rhetorically later):
'First a courtier of King Dareios,
and after that of King Xerxes,
now with Xerxes and his army,
at last Dimaratos will be vindicated.
...

He must be barely twenty-two years old
yet I'm certain just about that long ago
I enjoyed the very same body.
...

They stood among many others
close to a lighted tobacco shop window.
Their looks met by chance
and timidly, haltingly expressed
the illicit desire of their bodies.
Then a few uneasy steps along the street
until they smiled, and nodded slightly.
...

'Indeed,' said the proconsul, closing the book,
'This line is beautiful and very true.
Sophocles wrote it in a deeply philosophic mood.
How much we'll tell down there, how much,
and how very different we'll appear.
...

Engulfed by fear and suspicion,
mind agitated, eyes alarmed,
we try desperately to invent ways out,
plan how to avoid
the obvious danger that threatens us so terribly.
...

My life's joy and incense: recollection of those hours
when I found and captured pleasure as I wanted it.
My life's joy and incense: that I refused
all indulgence in routine love affairs.
...

In this obscene photograph sold in the street
secretly (have to watch out for the police),
in this whorish photograph,
how could there be such a dream-like face?
How did you get in here?
...

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.
...

Yes, I know his new poems;
all Beirut is raving about them.
I'll study them some other day.
I can't today because I'm rather upset.
Certainly he's more learned in Greek than Libanius.
A better poet than Meleager though? I wouldn't say so.
But Mebis, why talk about Libanius
and books and all these trivialities?
...