Theatre of Sidon (400 A. D.)
Son of an honorable citizen—most important of all, a good-looking young man of the theatre, amiable in many ways. I sometimes write highly audacious verses in Greek and these I circulate—surreptitiously, of course. O gods, may those puritans who prattle about morals never see those verses about an exceptional kind of sexual pleasure, the kind that leads toward a condemned, a barren love.
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.
Translations
Hijo de un ciudadano honorable —mas, sobre todo, guapo
efebo del teatro, por varias cualidades agradable—,
a menudo compongo en lengua griega
versos muy atrevidos, que hago circular
muy en secreto, por supuesto —¡dioses!, que no los vean 10
los de oscuro sayal, charlatanes de moral—
versos de exquisita sensualidad, ligada
al amor estéril y reprobado.
Cavafis, C. (2023). Ciento cincuenta y cuatro poemas (P. Bádenas de la Peña, traducción e introducción). UMA Editorial.
The Canon