Melancholy of Jason Cleander, Poet in Kommagini, A.D. 595

The aging of my body and my beauty is a wound from a merciless knife. I’m not resigned to it at all. I turn to you, Art of Poetry, because you have a kind of knowledge about drugs: attempts to numb the pain, in Imagination and Language. It is a wound from a merciless knife. Bring your drugs, Art of Poetry— they numb the wound at least for a little while.
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

Monotony

Next Poem