Too bad that, cut out as you are for grand and noble acts, this unfair fate of yours never offers encouragement, always denies you success; that cheap habits get in your way, pettiness, or indifference. And how terrible the day you give in (the day you let go and give in) and take the road for Susa and go to King Artaxerxes, who, well-disposed, gives you a place at his court and offers you satrapies and things like that— things you don’t want at all, though, in despair, you accept them just the same. You long for something else, ache for other things: praise from the Demos and the Sophists, that hard-won, that priceless acclaim— the Agora, the Theatre, the Crowns of Laurel. You can’t get any of these from Artaxerxes, you’ll never find any of these in the satrapy, and without them, what kind of life will you live?
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