He must be barely twenty-two years old— yet I’m certain that almost that many years ago I enjoyed the very same body. It isn’t erotic fever at all. And I’ve been in the casino for a few minutes only, so I haven’t had time to drink a great deal. I enjoyed that very same body. And if I don’t remember where, this one lapse of memory doesn’t mean a thing. There, now that he’s sitting down at the next table, I recognize every motion he makes—and under his clothes I see again the limbs I loved, naked.
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