Cavafy

  to the church of Nikomedia

  where voice raised and quite devout

  he reads the Holy Writ

  and the people admire his Christian piety.

  Before Time Changes Them

  They were very sorry at their parting.

  They didn’t want it. It was circumstance.

  Needs of livelihood made the one

  go far away, New York or Canada.

  Their love to be sure was not the way it was.

  It had diminished, the attraction, by degrees.

  It had diminished, Love’s attraction, a lot.

  But they did not want to part.

  It was circumstance—or maybe Chance

  (made manifest as artist) parts them now

  before Time quenches what they feel,

  before Time changes them.

  Each for the other will always be

  twenty-four years old, an attractive young man.

  He Came to Read

  He came to read: open there are

  two, three books: historians, poets,

  but he barely read ten minutes

  before he gave up. He is half asleep

  on the sofa. He belongs to books

  but he is twenty-three, and fair,

  and love passed this afternoon

  over his perfect flesh, his lips,

  over his flesh which is all beauty

  love’s warmth passed

  without ridiculous feelings of shame

  over that kind of enjoyment.

  31 BCE in Alexandria

  From his tiny hamlet on the outskirts

  still covered with dust from his trip

  the tradesman arrived, “Gum” and “Incense”

  “Oil—best grade” and “Scent for the Hair”

  he cried through the ways. But with the noise of the crowd

  parades and musicals, how to be heard?

  Jostled and pulled and bumped by the mob

  now at a loss he asks, “What is this foolishness?”

  Someone tosses him the gigantic lie,

  that from the palace, “Antony victor in Greece.”

  John Kantakouzinos Prevails

  He looks at the fields he still controls

  the grain, the herds, the fruitful

  trees, and further on his ancestral home

  full of luxurious clothes and furnishings and silver.

  They will be taken away from him—

  Lord Jesus Christ

  They will be taken away from him now.

  Will Kantakouzinos take pity on him

  if he goes and falls at his feet?

  They say he is merciful, full of mercy.

  But his people? his army?

  Or to Lady Irene, to fall at her feet? to weep?

  Stupid! to get involved in Anna’s party

  if only Master Andronikos had not lived

  long enough to marry her. Did we see success

  from her carrying-on? Did we see humanity?

  Not even the Franks respect her now.

  Her plans are a joke. Imbecilic all her preparation.

  While they were terrorizing all those from the City

  Kantakouzinos trashed them, trashed them did Master John.

  To think that he had aimed

  to go with Lord John’s party!

  And he would have done it.

  He would have been happy now

  an important commander for good, and secure

  if at the last second the bishop had not

  with his sacerdotal sway turned him around

  with items of information top-to-bottom wrong

  and promises and idiocies.

  Temethos, Antiochene, 400 AD

  Love-struck young Temethos’ lines of verse

  have the title “Emonides”, who was Antiochos

  Epiphanes’ cherished companion, a gorgeous youth

  out of Samosata. If the lines appear warm

  and full of feeling, it is because that Emonides

  (from that old time, the one hundred

  thirty-seventh year of the Kingdom of Hellenes

  maybe a little before) was set in the poem

  as mere name, fitting well there nonetheless.

  The poem expresses Temethos’s love,

  fair and worthy of him. We who are initiates,

  close friends of his, we who are initiates,

  know for whom the lines were written.

  Unsuspecting Antiochenes read “Emonides.”

  Of Colored Glass

  One detail from the coronation in Vlachernae

  of Ioannis Kantakouzenos and Irene Asan,

  Andronikos’ daughter,

  moves me very much:

  as they had but few precious stones

  (great was the poverty of our troubled land)

  they wore fakes, lots of pieces of glass

  red, green, and blue. Nothing

  mean, no disgrace, I would say,

  in these pieces made of colored glass.

  Instead they are like a grievous protest

  against injustice, the wretched destiny

  of the two being crowned.

  They are emblems of what it befit them to have

  of what it was wholly right that they have

  at their coronation, a Lord Ioannis

  Kantakouzenos, a Lady Irene Asan

  Andronikos’ daughter.

  The Twenty-fifth Year of his Life

  He goes regularly to the tavern where they met last month.

  He asked and they did not know a thing to tell:

  from their talk he knew he had met a total unknown,

  one out of many unknown and dubious young there

  who pass on by.

  He goes regularly anyhow to the taverna at night

  and sits and looks at the door to a point of exhaustion.

  He looks at the door. He may come in.

  Tonight he may come.

  Three weeks almost he acts like that: his wits are sick with lust.

  Their kisses stay on his mouth. He suffers relentless yearning

  in all his flesh the feel of that body on him

  he wants to be with him again

  He tries, agreed, not to betray himself,

  but sometimes he almost does not care.

  He knows to what he’s exposed,

  and besides he did decide.

  His way of life—it is not unlikely—

  is carrying him to destructive scandal.

  On the Italian Shore

  Kemos, Menedoros’ son, young Italian Hellene

  passes his life in amusements as these do,

  the young men from Magna Grecia

  reared in great wealth.

  But today quite against his nature

  pensive and downcast, close by the seashore,

  full of melancholy he watches ships unload

  their booty from the Peloponnese.

  Booty from Hellas. Corinthian loot.

  Ah, surely today it is not allowed

  it cannot be that the young Italian Hellene

  has any lust for amusement.

  In a Boring Little Town

  In the boring little town where he works

  as clerk in a general store,

  so very young—and where he waits

  for two, three months to go by

  two or three months for work to slow down

  so to change to the city and plunge

  straight into circulation and fun.

  In the boring little town where he waits—

  this evening, he fell into bed

  sick with love, all his youth on fire

  with fleshly yearning

  in beautiful tension all his beautiful youth

  and in his sleep, the pleasure came:

  in his sleep he sees and has

  the form and the flesh he wanted.

  Apollonius Tyaneus in Rhodes

  On proper upbringing and its practice<
br />
  Apollonios was speaking

  with a young man who at Rhodes

  was building a high-priced house.

  “When I go into a holy place,”

  the man from Tyana said at the end,

  “I would much rather see

  even in a little space

  a statue of ivory and gold

  than one in a large space

  made of cheap terra-cotta.

  “Terracotta” and “cheap”—hateful.

  And yet like a swindler it fools some

  (those without enough training)

  the terracotta and cheap.

  Kleitos Ill

  Kleitos, an amiable lad, twenty-three about,

  upbringing best, Greek learning well out of ordinary,

  is very very ill: the fever found him:

  it threshed in Alexandria this year.

  The fever found him exhausted already in spirit

  from longing: his companion, young actor,

  stopped loving him, stopped wanting him.

  He is very very ill and his parents tremble.

  And an old servant who brought him up

  trembles too for the life of Kleitos

  thinks in her fearful anguish of an idol

  she worshipped when she was small

  before she entered service of prominent Christians here

  and became herself a Christian.

  Cakes and wine and honey she takes in secret and places

  before the idol, and sings from chants of supplication

  all she can remember, bits and pieces,

  does not sense, silly thing,

  the dark spirit little cares

  if he gets well or not, he a Christian.

  In a Town of Asia Minor

  “News of the outcome of the naval battle at Actium

  was certainly not expected,

  but no need to order a new inscription,

  just change the name there

  before the last lines:”

  “ . . . freed the Romans

  from the pernicious Octavian,

  that comic copy of a Caesar.”

  “Now we’ll put:” “ . . . freed the Romans

  from the pernicious Antony.”

  “The whole text fits nicely.”

  “To the victor, most glorious,

  in every deed of war insuperable,

  wonderful for grand political accomplishment,

  for whom the people warmly prayed:

  Antony’s triumph.”

  “Here—as we said—the change:” “ . . . Caesar’s triumph,

  regarding him God’s fairest gift,

  to the mighty protector of the Greeks,

  honoring in his kindness Greek ways,

  beloved in every Greek land,

  highly designated for glory and praise,

  to the end of extended broadcast of his deeds

  in the Greek language, verse and prose,

  in the Greek language, which is the vehicle of fame . . .”

  “etc., etc. It all fits splendidly.”

  Priest at the Serapeion

  That good old man, my father,

  who always loved me the same,

  the good old man, my father, I mourn:

  he died two days ago a little before dawn.

  Jesus Christ, it is my effort every day

  to tend in every act, and every word, and thought

  the precepts of your most holy church.

  And all who deny you, them do I abhor.

  But now I mourn, I grieve,

  Christ, for my father,

  although he was—awful to say—

  at the particularly damned

  Serapeion a priest.

  In the Taverns

  In Beirut’s taverns and cribs I wallow:

  in Alexandria, I did not want to stay.

  Tamides left me: he went with the Eparch’s son

  for a villa on the Nile, for a palace in town.

  In Alexandria, it would not have done

  for me to stay.

  In Beirut’s taverns and cribs I wallow:

  in mean debauch I pass my lowdown time.

  One thing keeps me alive

  like a lasting beauty, like a fragrance

  that has stayed on my flesh.

  It is that Tamides for two years

  was my very own, supernal young man,

  my very own and not for a house

  and not for a villa on the Nile.

  A Great Train of Priests and Laity

  A train of priests and laity

  every calling represented

  passes through gateways, streets, and squares

  of the renowned city of Antioch.

  At the head of the great imposing train

  a handsome ephebe dressed in white

  carries with arms upraised the Cross

  our power and hope, the holy Cross.

  The pagans, so arrogant just before

  timid now and fearful get themselves

  in haste far from the train.

  Far away from us, far away

  I hope they stay forever.

  (As long as they do not renounce their error)

  On ahead, the holy Cross proceeds.

  To every neighborhood

  where Christians live in reverence

  the Cross brings comfort and joy.

  They come out, the pious,

  at the doors to their houses

  and full of exultation pay respect—

  to the power, the world’s redemption, the Cross.

  It is an annual Christian Feast Day

  But look, today they celebrate

  with much more show.

  The state at last is freed from its travail.

  The execrable, the abhorrent

  Julian rules no more.

  Let us wish most reverent Jovian well.

  Sophist out of Syria

  Esteemed sophist, here out of Syria,

  planning a history of Antioch

  there should be mention in your account

  of famous Meve, without question

  nicest looking, best-beloved

  young man of Antioch.

  None of the other young men

  living the life gets his pay.

  To be with Meve two, three days

  very often you pay

  up to one hundred staters.

  “At Antioch,” I said, but also

  Alexandria, and even too at Rome

  no young man is as lovable as Meve.

  Julian and the Men of Antioch

  “The Chi, they say, did not do the city any wrong, nor did the Kappa. . . . We happened on people who could explain . . . and learned that the letters are the beginnings of names. One means Christ, the other Constantius.”

  Julian, Misopogon

  Was it possible ever for them to disown

  their beautiful life, their mix

  of daily entertainments, their luminous

  theater where Art joined

  the erotic tendencies of flesh?

  Corrupt to a point—probably quite a lot—

  they were, but content that theirs

  was the notorious life of Antioch,

  the sensual, the absolutely elegant life.

  Disown this? To pay attention to what?

  His windy talks about false gods?

  His boring talks about himself?

  His childish fear of the theater?

  His awkward prudery? His funny beard?

  Oh yes, they preferred the Chi.

  Oh yes, they preferred the Kappa,

  one hundred times over.

  Anna Dalassini

  In the golden bull that Alexios Comnenos put out

  to grant his mother signal honor,

  the astute lady, Anna Dalassini—

  worthy of note for her work and her manner—

  there are various kinds of praise.

  Here from among them let us co
nvey

  one courteous, beautiful turn:

  “ ‘Mine or yours,’ this cold expression, was not said.”

  Days of 1896

  He was utterly debased: his amorous bent

  strictly forbidden and held in contempt

  (inborn for all of that) was the cause.

  He lived in a thoroughly sanctimonious world.

  By degree he lost his little bit of money

  and then his place in that world

  and next, his good name.

  Close to thirty, he had not spent

  one year at work—known at least.

  Sometimes he made his expenses

  as go-between in negotiations thought shameful.

  He had become the sort

  if you were seen with him often

  you were very much compromised.

  But not just this. That would not be right.

  Worthy of something more

  is the memory of his beauty.

  There is another point of view from which

  he strikes one as likeable.

  He strikes one as a simple

  genuine creature of love

  who sets over honor and good name

  without examination the pure

  sensual pleasure of his pure flesh.

  His good name? But a thoroughly

  sanctimonious world would

  make stupid comparisons.

  Two Young Men, 23 to 24 Years Old

  From half past ten he was in the cafe

  expecting him soon to appear;

  midnight came and he still expected;

  half-past one came: the café

  had emptied almost wholly,

  he was bored with reading newspapers

  mechanically; of his lone three shillings

  only one was left: over the time he waited

  he spent the rest on coffees and cognac.

  He had smoked all his cigarettes:

  so much expectation used him up:

  by this time, alone as he was, there began

  to occupy him bothersome thoughts

  of his misguided life

  but when he saw his friend come in—right away

  weariness, boredom, thoughts fled.

  His friend brought unexpected news:

  he had won at cards sixty pounds.

  Their beautiful faces, their exquisite youth,