Selected Poems by Constantine P. Cavafy

Author:Constantine P. Cavafy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 2010-10-25T00:00:00+00:00

He’s lost him for good, as if he’d never existed.

The boy wished – so he said – he wished to be freed

from the stigma and reproach of that unhealthy pleasure;

from the stigma and reproach of that shameful pleasure.

It wasn’t too late – he said – for him to break free.

He’s lost him for good, as if he’d never existed.

Through imagination, and self-delusion,

he seeks those lips on the lips of others;

he’s trying to feel that lost love again.

Julian, Seeing the Contempt

‘Seeing, therefore, the great contempt

in which we hold the gods,’ he says with such a serious air.

Contempt? What did he expect?

Let him reorganize the religion as he likes.

Let him counsel the High Priest of Galatia

or other such men, exhorting and directing them.

His friends were not Christians, that much was certain.

Unlike him (a Christian born and bred)

they would never aspire to dabble

in the formation of a newfangled church,

as ludicrous in concept as in application.

They were Greeks after all. Remember, Augustus –

nothing in excess.

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