The Complete Poems of C.P. Cavafy. Daniel Mendelsohn

you, see to it

      (Sithaspes, by the god, don’t let them forget)

      that after the “King” and the “Savior”

      the engraving should read, in elegant letters, “Philhellene.”

      Now don’t start in on me with your quips,

      your “Where are the Greeks?” and “What’s Greek

      here, behind the Zágros, beyond Phráata?”

      Many, many others, more oriental than ourselves,

      write it, and so we’ll write it too.

      And after all, don’t forget that now and then

      sophists come to us from Syria,

      and versifiers, and other devotees of puffery.

      Hence unhellenised we are not, I rather think.

      [1906; 1912]

       The Steps

      On an ebony bed that is adorned

      with eagles made of coral, Nero sleeps

      deeply—heedless, calm, and happy;

      flush in the prime of the flesh,

      and in the beautiful vigor of youth.

      But in the alabaster hall that holds

      the ancient shrine of the Ahenobarbi

      how uneasy are his Lares!

      The little household gods are trembling,

      trying to hide their slight bodies.

      For they’ve heard a ghastly sound,

      a fatal sound mounting the stairs,

      footsteps of iron that rattle the steps.

      And, faint with fear now, the pathetic Lares,

      wriggle their way to the back of the shrine;

      each jostles the other and stumbles

      each little god falls over the other

      because they’ve understood what kind of sound it is,

      have come to know by now the Erinyes’ footsteps.

      [1893; 1897; 1903; 1909]

       Herodes Atticus

      Ah, Herodes Atticus, what glory is his!

      Alexander of Seleucia, one of our better sophists,

      on arriving in Athens to lecture,

      finds the city deserted, since Herodes was

      away in the country. And all of the young people

      followed him out there to hear him.

      So Alexander the sophist

      writes Herodes a letter

      requesting that he send back the Greeks.

      And smooth Herodes swiftly responds,

      “I too am coming, along with the Greeks.”

      How many lads in Alexandria now,

      in Antioch, or in Beirut

      (tomorrow’s orators, trained by Greek culture)

      when they gather at choice dinner parties

      where sometimes the talk is of fine intellectual points,

      and sometimes about their exquisite amours,

      suddenly, abstracted, fall silent.

      They leave their glasses untouched at their sides,

      and they ponder the luck of Herodes—

      what other sophist was honored like this?—

      whatever he wants and whatever he does

      the Greeks (the Greeks!) follow him,

      neither to criticize nor to debate,

      nor even to choose any more; just to follow.

      [1900; 1911; 1912]

       Sculptor from Tyana

      As you will have heard, I’m no beginner.

      Lots of stone has passed between my hands.

      And in Tyana, my native land,

      they know me well. And here the senators

      commission many statues.

      Let me show

      a few to you right now. Notice this Rhea;

      august, all fortitude, quite archaic.

      Notice the Pompey. The Marius,

      the Aemilius Paullus, and the African Scipio.

      The likenesses, as much as I was able, are true.

      The Patroclus (I’ll touch him up soon).

      Near those pieces of yellowish

      marble there, that’s Caesarion.

      And for some time now I’ve been involved

      in making a Poseidon. Most of all

      I’m studying his horses: how to mold them.

      They must be rendered so delicately that

      it will be clear from their bodies, their feet,

      that they aren’t treading earth, but racing on water.

      But this work here is my favorite of all,

      which I made with the greatest care and deep feeling:

      him, one warm day in summer

      when my thoughts were ascending to ideal things,

      him I stood dreaming here, the young Hermes.

      [1893; 1903; 1911]

       The Tomb of Lysias the Grammarian

      Just there, on the right as you go in,

      in the Beirut library we buried him:

      the scholar Lysias, a grammarian.

      The location suits him beautifully.

      We put him near the things that he

      remembers maybe even there—glosses, texts,

      apparatuses, variants, the multivolume works

      of scholarship on Greek idiom. Also, like this,

      his tomb will be seen and honored by us

      as we pass by on our way to the books.

      [1911; 1914]

       Tomb of Eurion

      Inside of this elaborate memorial,

      made entirely of syenite stone,

      which so many violets, so many lilies adorn,

      Eurion lies buried, so beautiful.

      A boy of twenty-five, an Alexandrian.

      Through the father’s kin, old Macedonian;

      a line of alabarchs on his mother’s side.

      With Aristoclitus