Constantine P. Cavafy: Greatness

“It will be a great relief when a window opens.”

Constantine P. Cavafy

The Windows http://www.cavafy.com/poems/content.asp?id=137&cat=1
Collected Poems (1992)
Context: It will be a great relief when a window opens.
But the windows are not there to be found —
or at least I cannot find them. And perhaps
it is better that I don’t find them.
Perhaps the light will prove another tyranny.
Who knows what new things it will expose?

“Of course many people will have much to say.
We should listen. But we won't be deceived
by words such as Indispensable, Unique, and Great.”

Constantine P. Cavafy

Collected Poems (1992), When the Watchman Saw the Light (1900)
Context: Of course many people will have much to say.
We should listen. But we won't be deceived
by words such as Indispensable, Unique, and Great.
Someone else indispensable and unique and great
can always be found at a moment's notice.

People

“And from this marvellous pan-Hellenic expedition,
triumphant, brilliant in every way,
celebrated on all sides, glorified
incomparable, we emerged:
the great new Hellenic world.”

Constantine P. Cavafy

In The Year 200 B. C. (1931)

World , Way

“How much we’ll tell down there, how much,
and how very different we’ll appear.
What we protect here like sleepless guards,
wounds and secrets locked inside us,
protect with such great anxiety day after day,
we’ll disclose freely and clearly down there.”

Constantine P. Cavafy

“The Rest I Will Tell to Those Down to Hades” http://www.cavafy.com/poems/content.asp?id=173&cat=4
Collected Poems (1992)

Secret , Appearance

“The love they felt wasn’t, of course, what it once had been;
the attraction between them had gradually diminished,
the attraction had diminished a great deal.
But to be separated, that wasn’t what they themselves wanted.”

Constantine P. Cavafy

Before Time Altered Them http://www.cavafy.com/poems/content.asp?id=123&cat=1
Collected Poems (1992)