An amazing discovery. If you highlight the space below, it should show up.

I would like to inform you that it is possible to cry while eating gummy worms.

Various Poetry by Cavafy

I'm not making a statement with these poems, I just picked a few that I knew. I won't comment on them, but leave it open to your interpretation. I doubt anyone reads this blog because I do not post. :):)

 

The City

You said: "I'll go to another country, go to another shore,
find another city better than this one.
Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong
and my heart -like something dead- lies buried.
How long can I let my mind moulder in this place?
Wherever I turn, wherever I look,
I see the black ruins of my life, here,
where I've spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed them totally."
You won't find a new country, won't find another shore.
This city will always pursue you.
You'll walk the same streets, grow old
in the same neighbourhoods, turn grey in these same houses.
You'll always end up in this city. Don't hope for things elsewhere:
there's no ship for you, there's no road.
Now that you've wasted your life here, in this small corner,
you've destroyed it everywhere in the world.

Constantine P. Cavafy

An Old Man

At the noisy end of the café, head bent
over the table, an old man sits alone,
a newspaper in front of him.
And in the miserable banality of old age
he thinks how little he enjoyed the years
when he had strentgh, and wit, and looks.

He knows he's very old now: sees it, feels it.
Yet it seems he was young just yesterday.
The time's gone by so quickly, gone by so quickly.

And he thinks how Discretion fooled him,
how he always believed, so stupidly
that cheat who said: "Tomorrow. You have plenty of time."

He remembers impulses bridled, the joy
he sacrificed. Every chance he lost
now mocks his brainless prudence.

But so much thinking, so much remembering
makes the old man dizzy. He falls asleep,
his head resting on the café table.

Constantine P. Cavafy

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