Status Updates From C. P. Cavafy: Collected Poe...

Impossible Things

There is one joy alone, but one that’s blessed,
one consolation only in this pain.
How many thronging vulgar days were missed
because of this ending; how much ennui.


A poet has said: “The loveliest
music is the one that cannot be played.”
And I, I daresay that by far the best
life is the one that cannot be lived.

The Windows

In these shadowed rooms, in which I pass
gloomy days, up and down I pace
that I might find the windows.—For a window
to be open would be a consolation.—
But there are no windows, or I can’t
find them. And perhaps it’s best I don’t.
Perhaps the light will be a new oppression.
Who knows what new things it will show.

Those two last lines. Goodness.

In The Same Space

House, coffeehouses, neighborhood: setting
that I see and where I walk; year after year.

I crafted you amid joy and amid sorrows:
out of so much that happened, out of so many things.

And you’ve been wholly remade into feeling; for me.

The apparition of my body in its youth
came and also brought me cause for pain:
deaths in the family; separations;
the feelings of my loved ones, the feelings of
those long dead which I so little valued.
Half past twelve. How the time has passed.
Half past twelve. How the years have passed.

“No ma Kavafis si legge in un giorno”