Kyriakos
10-20-2010, 07:02 AM
I decided to start a thread about this poet, who is my favourite.
He lived in Alexandria in the early 20th century, wrote of greek themes, symbolising his own life with passages reffering to ancient, hellenistic and Byzantine times.
Here are a few poems i selected from the site www.Cavafy.com:
Candles
Days to come stand in front of us
like a row of lighted candles—
golden, warm, and vivid candles.
Days gone by fall behind us,
a gloomy line of snuffed-out candles;
the nearest are smoking still,
cold, melted, and bent.
I don’t want to look at them: their shape saddens me,
and it saddens me to remember their original light.
I look ahead at my lighted candles.
I don’t want to turn for fear of seeing, terrified,
how quickly that dark line gets longer,
how quickly the snuffed-out candles proliferate.
Walls
With no consideration, no pity, no shame,
they have built walls around me, thick and high.
And now I sit here feeling hopeless.
I can’t think of anything else: this fate gnaws my mind—
because I had so much to do outside.
When they were building the walls, how could I not have noticed!
But I never heard the builders, not a sound.
Imperceptibly they have closed me off from the outside world.
And, finally, here is my own translation into english of one of his poems:
The pawn
Many times, while watching others playing chess
my eye is following a pawn
which slowly finds the way
to reach the final square.
It reaches it with such willingness
that one thinks that there will be the start of
its pleasures, and its compensations.
It finds much unfortune while still on its way there.
Unmounted troops throw their blades to its side
the castles hit it with their broad lines
inside of their two squares fast riders
seek to make it get stuck, cunningly
and with the threat behind the corner,
and now and then also it finds on its path
another pawn, sent from the barracks of the enemy.
But it survives all those dangers
and it reaches the final square.
How thriumphantly it reaches there,
in the horrible final square
how willingly does it touch its death!
Because here the pawn will die
and all of its hardships were just for that.
For the Queen, which shall save us,
to ressurect her from the grave
it came to fall to the hades of the chessboard.
He lived in Alexandria in the early 20th century, wrote of greek themes, symbolising his own life with passages reffering to ancient, hellenistic and Byzantine times.
Here are a few poems i selected from the site www.Cavafy.com:
Candles
Days to come stand in front of us
like a row of lighted candles—
golden, warm, and vivid candles.
Days gone by fall behind us,
a gloomy line of snuffed-out candles;
the nearest are smoking still,
cold, melted, and bent.
I don’t want to look at them: their shape saddens me,
and it saddens me to remember their original light.
I look ahead at my lighted candles.
I don’t want to turn for fear of seeing, terrified,
how quickly that dark line gets longer,
how quickly the snuffed-out candles proliferate.
Walls
With no consideration, no pity, no shame,
they have built walls around me, thick and high.
And now I sit here feeling hopeless.
I can’t think of anything else: this fate gnaws my mind—
because I had so much to do outside.
When they were building the walls, how could I not have noticed!
But I never heard the builders, not a sound.
Imperceptibly they have closed me off from the outside world.
And, finally, here is my own translation into english of one of his poems:
The pawn
Many times, while watching others playing chess
my eye is following a pawn
which slowly finds the way
to reach the final square.
It reaches it with such willingness
that one thinks that there will be the start of
its pleasures, and its compensations.
It finds much unfortune while still on its way there.
Unmounted troops throw their blades to its side
the castles hit it with their broad lines
inside of their two squares fast riders
seek to make it get stuck, cunningly
and with the threat behind the corner,
and now and then also it finds on its path
another pawn, sent from the barracks of the enemy.
But it survives all those dangers
and it reaches the final square.
How thriumphantly it reaches there,
in the horrible final square
how willingly does it touch its death!
Because here the pawn will die
and all of its hardships were just for that.
For the Queen, which shall save us,
to ressurect her from the grave
it came to fall to the hades of the chessboard.