Constantine P. Cavafy: Thing

“Perhaps the light will prove another tyranny.
Who knows what new things it will expose?”

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?

Light

“Just to be on the first step
should make you happy and proud.
To have come this far is no small achievement:
what you have done is a glorious thing.”

Constantine P. Cavafy

The First Step http://www.cavafy.com/poems/content.asp?id=145&cat=1
Collected Poems (1992)
Context: Just to be on the first step
should make you happy and proud.
To have come this far is no small achievement:
what you have done is a glorious thing.
Even this first step
is a long way above the ordinary world.
To stand on this step
you must be in your own right
a member of the city of ideas.
And it is a hard, unusual thing
to be enrolled as a citizen of that city.
Its councils are full of Legislators
no charlatan can fool.

Happiness

“Things impolitic and dangerous:
praise for Greek ideals,
supernatural magic, visits to pagan temples.”

Constantine P. Cavafy

Julian in Nicomedia http://www.cavafy.com/poems/content.asp?id=106&cat=1
Collected Poems (1992)
Context: Things impolitic and dangerous:
praise for Greek ideals,
supernatural magic, visits to pagan temples.
Enthusiasm for the ancient gods

“Of what’s to come the wise perceive
things about to happen.”

Constantine P. Cavafy

But the Wise Perceive Things about to Happen http://www.cavafy.com/poems/content.asp?id=128&cat=1
Collected Poems (1992)
Context: Of what’s to come the wise perceive
things about to happen. Sometimes during moments of intense study
their hearing’s troubled: the hidden sound
of things approaching reaches them,
and they listen reverently, while in the street outside
the people hear nothing whatsoever.

“The frivolous can call me frivolous.
I’ve always been most punctilious about
important things.”

Constantine P. Cavafy

A Byzantine Nobleman in Exile Composing Verses http://www.cavafy.com/poems/content.asp?id=16&cat=1
Collected Poems (1992)
Context: The frivolous can call me frivolous.
I’ve always been most punctilious about
important things. And I insist
that no one knows better than I do
the Holy Fathers, or the Scriptures, or the Canons of the Councils.

“Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today
wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas?
Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts,
rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?
Why are they carrying elegant canes
beautifully worked in silver and gold?Because the barbarians are coming today
and things like that dazzle the barbarians.”

Constantine P. Cavafy Waiting for the Barbarians

Source: Waiting for the Barbarians (1904), l. 16

“We for the best will strive. And always more
defective, more perplexing than before,
shall all things fare; until, as in a mist,
we stray bewildered. Then we shall desist.
For in that helpless hour the gods attend.
They always come, the gods. They will descend
from their machines, and straightway liberate
some and as suddenly exterminate
others; and having reformed us, they will go. —
And afterward, one will act so; and so
another; and in time the rest will do
as they needs must. And we shall start anew.”

Constantine P. Cavafy

The Intervention of the Gods http://www.cavafy.com/poems/content.asp?id=235&cat=4
Poems by C. P. Cavafy (2003)

God , Time

“As the shores of Ithaca gradually
Faded away behind him
And he sailed swiftly westward
Toward Iberia and the Pillars of Hercules,
Far from every Achaean sea,
He felt he was alive once more,
Freed from the oppressive bonds
Of familiar, domestic things.
And his adventurous heart rejoiced
Coldly, devoid of love.”

Constantine P. Cavafy

Second Odyssey http://www.cavafy.com/poems/content.asp?id=329&cat=4, as translated by Walter Kaiser
Collected Poems (1992)

Love , Heart , Sea