While looking at a half-gray opal
I remembered two lovely gray eyes—
it must be twenty years ago I saw them...
........................................
We were lovers for a month.
Then he went away to work, I think in Smyrna,
and we never met again.
Those gray eyes will have lost their beauty—if he’s still alive;
that lovely face will have spoiled.
Memory, keep them the way they were.
And, memory, whatever of that love you can bring back,
whatever you can, bring back tonight.
Reprinted from C.P. CAVAFY: Collected Poems Revised Edition, translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, edited by George Savidis. Translation copyright © 1975, 1992 by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Princeton University Press. For reuse of these translations, please contact Princeton University Press.
The Canon