C.P. Cavafy

Here is a poem for a Monday morning by Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis (April 29, 1863 – April 29, 1933), known, especially in English, as Constantine P. Cavafy and often published as C. P. Cavafy, Greek poet, journalist, and civil servant from Alexandria. His work, as one translator put it, "holds the historical and the erotic in a single embrace."

The Afternoon Sun

This room, how well I know it.
Now they’re renting it, and the one next to it,
as offices. The whole house has become
an office building for agents, businessmen, companies.

This room, how familiar it is.
The couch was here, near the door,
a Turkish carpet in front of it.
Close by, the shelf with two yellow vases.
On the right—no, opposite—a wardrobe with a mirror.
In the middle the table where he wrote,
and the three big wicker chairs.
Beside the window the bed
where we made love so many times.

They must still be around somewhere, those old things.

Beside the window the bed;
the afternoon sun used to touch half of it
.. . . One afternoon at four o’clock we separated
for a week only. . . And then—
that week became forever.

--C. P. Cavafy

["The City" from C.P. Cavafy: Collected Poems. Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard.]