All Poems

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In Love For Long

© Edwin Muir

I've been in love for long
With what I cannot tell
And will contrive a song
For the intangible
That has no mould or shape,
From which there's no escape.

Circle and Square

© Edwin Muir

I give you half of me;
No more, lest I should make
A ground for perjury.
For your sake, for my sake,
Half will you take?

Abraham

© Edwin Muir

The rivulet-loving wanderer Abraham
Through waterless wastes tracing his fields of pasture
Led his Chaldean herds and fattening flocks
With the meandering art of wavering water

Caesarion

© Constantine Cavafy

When I had managed to verify the era
I would have put the book away, had not a small
and insignificant mention of king Caesarion
immediately attracted my attention.....

Ionian

© Constantine Cavafy

Just because we've torn their statues down,
and cast them from their temples,
doesn't for a moment mean the gods are dead.
Land of Ionia, they love you yet,

Aemilianus Monae, Alexandrian, 628 - 655 A.D.

© Constantine Cavafy

With words, with countenance, and with manners
I shall build an excellent panoply;
and in this way I shall face evil men
without having any fear or weakness.

Anna Dalassené

© Constantine Cavafy

In the golden bull that Alexios Comnenos issued
to prominently honor his mother,
the very sagacious Lady Anna Dalassené
distinguished in her works, in her ways

They had not seen, for ages, such beautiful gifts in Delphi
as these that had been sent by the two brothers,
the rival Ptolemaic kings. After they had received them
however, the priests were uneasy about the oracle. They will need

Those Who Fought For The Achaean League

© Constantine Cavafy

Valiant are you who fought and fell gloriously;
fearless of those who were everywhere victorious.
Blameless, even if Diaeos and Critolaos were at fault.
When the Greeks want to boast,
"Our nation turns out such men" they will say
of you. And thus marvellous will be your praise. --

One Of Their Gods

© Constantine Cavafy

When one of them passed through the market place
of Seleucia, toward the hour that night falls
as a tall and perfectly handsome youth,
with the joy of immortality in his eyes,

Nero's Term

© Constantine Cavafy

Now he will return to Rome slightly tired,
but delightfully tired from this journey,
full of days of enjoyment --
at the theaters, the gardens, the gymnasia...
evenings at cities of Achaia...
Ah the delight of nude bodies, above all...

Interruption

© Constantine Cavafy

We interrupt the work of the gods,
hasty and inexperienced beings of the moment.
In the palaces of Eleusis and Phthia
Demeter and Thetis start good works

The Satrapy

© Constantine Cavafy

What a misfortune, although you are made
for fine and great works
this unjust fate of yours always
denies you encouragement and success;

Apollonius Of Tyana In Rhodes

© Constantine Cavafy

The "clay" and "vulgar"; the detestable:
that already some people (without enough training)
it deceives knavishly. The clay and vulgar.

In The Same Space

The surroundings of home, centers, neighorhood
which I see and where I walk; for years and years.

They Should Have Provided

I have almost been reduced to a homeless pauper.
This fatal city, Antioch,
has consumed all my money;
this fatal city with its expensive life.

Picture Of A 23-Year-Old Youth Painted By His Friend Of The Same Age, An Amature

He finished the painting yesterday noon. Now
he studies it in detail. He has painted him in a
gray unbuttoned coat, a deep gray; without
any vest or any tie. With a rose-colored shirt;

Supplication

The sea took a sailor to its depths.--
His mother, unsuspecting, goes and lightsa tall candle before the Virgin Mary
for his speedy return and for fine weather --and always she turns her ear to the wind.
But while she prays and implores,the icon listens, solemn and sad,

Days Of 1903

I never found them again -- the things so quickly lost....
the poetic eyes, the pale
face.... in the dusk of the street....

He Vows

Every so often he vows to start a better life.
But when night comes with her own counsels,
with her compromises, and with her promises;
but when night comes with her own power
of the body that wants and demands, he returns,
forlorn, to the same fatal joy.