Lines written by young Temethos, madly in love. The title: “Emonidis”—the favorite of Antiochos Epiphanis; a very handsome young man from Samosata. But if the lines come out ardent, full of feeling, it is because Emonidis (belonging to that other, much older time: the 137th year of the Greek kingdom, maybe a bit earlier) is in the poem merely as a name—a suitable one nevertheless. The poem gives voice to the love Temethos feels, a beautiful kind of love, worthy of him. We the initiated— his intimate friends—we the initiated know about whom those lines were written. The unsuspecting Antiochians read simply “Emonidis.”
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