From all I've done and all I've said
let them not seek to find who I've been.
An obstacle stood and transformed
my acts and way of my life.
An obstacle stood and stopped me
many a time as I was going to speak.
The surroundings of home, centers, neighorhood
which I see and where I walk; for years and years.
My most unobserved acts,
and my writings the most covered --
thence only they will feel me.
I have created you in joy and in sorrows:
with so many circumstances, with so many things.
But mayhaps it is not worth to spend
this much care and this much effort to know me.
For -- in the more perfect society --
someone else like me created
will certainly appear and freely act.
And you have become all feeling, for me.
Costantine Cavafy
4.09.2008
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2 comments:
The NYRB has a new essay on Cavafy...a review actually of a new translation of his poems...if I remember it correctly...or is it in the New Yorker?
it's in NYRB. for this post i used the rae dalven translation - i personally prefer her lyricism.
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