some poems
by Cavafy
…and a drawing that Karl says looks like Kirchner…
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IN THE STREET
His attractive face a bit pale,
his chestnut eyes looking tired, dazed,
twenty-five years old but could be taken for twenty,
with something of the artist in the way he dresses
—the color of his tie, shape of his collar—
he drifts aimlessly down the street,
as though still hypnotized by the illicit pleasure,
the very illicit pleasure that has just been his.
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THE CITY
You said: “I’ll go to another country, go to another shore,
find another city better than this one.
Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong
and my heart lies buried as though it were something dead.
How long can I let my mind moulder in this place?
Wherever I turn, wherever I happen to look,
I see the black ruins of my life, here,
where I’ve spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed them totally.”
You won’t find a new country, won’t find another shore.
This city will always pursue you. You will walk
the same streets, grow old in the same neighborhoods,
will turn gray in these same houses.
You will always end up in this city. Don’t hope for things elsewhere:
there is no ship for you, there is no road.
As you’ve wasted your life here, in this small corner,
you’ve destroyed it everywhere else in the world.
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IN THE SAME SPACE
The setting of houses, cafés, the neighborhood
that I’ve seen and walked through years on end:
I created you while I was happy, while I was sad,
with so many incidents, so many details.
And, for me, the whole of you is transformed into feeling.
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