C. P. Cavafy

Collected Poems, Revised Edition

C. P. Cavafy, George Savidis, Edmund Keeley, Philip Sherrard

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780691264646, 9780691069845
• eBook ISBN: 9780691213132
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

C. P. Cavafy (1863–1933) lived in relative obscurity in Alexandria, and a collected edition of his poems was not published until after his death. Now, however, he is regarded as the most important figure in twentieth-century Greek poetry, and his poems are considered among the most powerful in modern European literature. Here is an extensively revised edition of the acclaimed translations of Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, which capture Cavafy's mixture of formal and idiomatic use of language and preserve the immediacy of his frank treatment of homosexual themes, his brilliant re-creation of history, and his astute political ironies. The resetting of the entire edition has permitted the translators to review each poem and to make alterations where appropriate. George Savidis has revised the notes according to his latest edition of the Greek text.

“PUBLISHED POEMS”

1896-1932

WALLS

With no consideration, no pity, no shame,

they have built walls around me, thick and high.

And now I sit here feeling hopeless.

I can’t think of anything else: this fate gnaws my mind—

because I had so much to do outside.

When they were building the walls, how could I not have noticed!

But I never heard the builders, not a sound.

Imperceptibly they have closed me off from the outside world.

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 strength, eloquence, and looks.

He knows he’s aged a lot: he sees it, feels it.

Yet it seems he was young just yesterday.

So brief an interval, so very brief.

And he thinks of Prudence, how it fooled him,

how he always believed—what madness—

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 senseless caution.

But so much thinking, so much remembering

makes the old man dizzy. He falls asleep,

his head resting on the café table.

THE HORSES OF ACHILLES

When they saw Patroklos dead

—so brave and strong, so young—

the horses of Achilles began to weep;

their immortal nature was upset deeply

by this work of death they had to look at.

They reared their heads, tossed their long manes,

beat the ground with their hooves, and mourned

Patroklos, seeing him lifeless, destroyed,

now mere flesh only, his spirit gone,

defenseless, without breath,

turned back from life to the great Nothingness.

Zeus saw the tears of those immortal horses and felt sorry.

“At the wedding of Peleus,” he said,

“I should not have acted so thoughtlessly.

Better if we hadn’t given you as a gift,

my unhappy horses. What business did you have down there,

among pathetic human beings, the toys of fate.

You are free of death, you will not get old,

yet ephemeral disasters torment you.

Men have caught you up in their misery.”

But it was for the eternal disaster of death

that those two gallant horses shed their tears.

PRAYER

The sea engulfed a sailor in its depths.

Unaware, his mother goes and lights

a tall candle before the ikon of our Lady,

praying for him to come back quickly, for the weather to be good—

her ear cocked always to the wind.

While she prays and supplicates,

the ikon listens, solemn, sad,

knowing the son she waits for never will come back.

THE FUNERAL OF SARPEDON

Zeus mourns deeply:

Patroklos has killed Sarpedon.

Now Patroklos and the Achaians rush forward

to snatch up the body, to dishonor it.

But Zeus does not tolerate that at all.

Though he let his favorite child be killed—

this the Law required—

he will at least honor him after death.

So he now sends Apollo down to the plain

with instructions about how the body should be tended.

Apollo reverently raises the hero’s body

and carries it in sorrow to the river.

He washes the dust and blood away,

heals its terrible wounds so no trace is left,

pours perfume of ambrosia over it,

and dresses it in radiant Olympian robes.

He bleaches the skin, and with a pearl comb

combs out the jet black hair.

He spreads and arranges the beautiful limbs.

Now he looks like a young king, a royal charioteer—

twenty-five or twenty-six years old—

resting himself after winning

the prize in a famous race,

his chariot all gold and his horses the fastest.

Having finished his task this way,

Apollo calls for the two brothers,

Sleep and Death, and orders them

to take the body to Lykia, the rich country.

So the two brothers, Sleep and Death,

set off on foot toward the rich country, Lykia;

and when they reached the door

of the king’s palace,

they handed over the honored body

and then returned to their other labors and concerns.

And once the body was received in the palace

the sad burial began, with processions and honors and dirges,

with many libations from sacred vessels,

with all pomp and circumstance.

Then skilled workers from the city

and celebrated craftsmen in stone

came to make the tombstone and the to...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Princeton Modern Greek Studies
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Translators’ Foreword to the Revised Edition
• “Published Poems”
• “Unpublished Poems”
• Editor’s Introduction to the Notes
• Appendix
• Notes to the Poems
• Biographical Note
• Alphabetical Index of Titles
• The Lockert Library of Poetry in Translation