Poetry

The City

BY C. P. CAVAFY

You said: “I’ll go to another country, go to another shore,
find another city better than this one.
Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong
and my heart lies buried like something dead.
How long can I let my mind moulder in this place?
Wherever I turn, wherever I look,
I see the black ruins of my life, here,
where I’ve spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed them totally.”

You won’t find a new country, won’t find another shore.
This city will always pursue you.
You’ll walk the same streets, grow old
in the same neighborhoods, turn gray in these same houses.
You’ll always end up in this city. Don’t hope for things elsewhere:
there’s no ship for you, there’s no road.
Now that you’ve wasted your life here, in this small corner,
you’ve destroyed it everywhere in the world.
TRANSLATED BY EDMUND KEELEY AND PHILIP SHERRARD

“Sometimes dreaming is not enough,
I need words to touch my soul,
to feel that we can fly free
above what we can conceive of
I wish I dream I could create more,
sit down, train myself to put the word
combinations on paper,
to drag them from within me”

When did I learn that poetry was a dirty word? I don’t remember, probably about the same time I realized it was what I wanted to write. So goth, so trite so overblown, such a cliche.

Poetry was originally published on Dreaming and Doing

Poetry

The City

BY C. P. CAVAFY

You said: “I’ll go to another country, go to another shore,
find another city better than this one.
Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong
and my heart lies buried like something dead.
How long can I let my mind moulder in this place?
Wherever I turn, wherever I look,
I see the black ruins of my life, here,
where I’ve spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed them totally.”

You won’t find a new country, won’t find another shore.
This city will always pursue you.
You’ll walk the same streets, grow old
in the same neighborhoods, turn gray in these same houses.
You’ll always end up in this city. Don’t hope for things elsewhere:
there’s no ship for you, there’s no road.
Now that you’ve wasted your life here, in this small corner,
you’ve destroyed it everywhere in the world.
TRANSLATED BY EDMUND KEELEY AND PHILIP SHERRARD

“Sometimes dreaming is not enough,
I need words to touch my soul,
to feel that we can fly free
above what we can conceive of
I wish I dream I could create more,
sit down, train myself to put the word
combinations on paper,
to drag them from within me”

When did I learn that poetry was a dirty word? I don’t remember, probably about the same time I realized it was what I wanted to write. So goth, so trite so overblown, such a cliche.

Poetry was originally published on Dreaming and Doing

Poetry

The City

BY C. P. CAVAFY

You said: “I’ll go to another country, go to another shore,
find another city better than this one.
Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong
and my heart lies buried like something dead.
How long can I let my mind moulder in this place?
Wherever I turn, wherever I look,
I see the black ruins of my life, here,
where I’ve spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed them totally.”

You won’t find a new country, won’t find another shore.
This city will always pursue you.
You’ll walk the same streets, grow old
in the same neighborhoods, turn gray in these same houses.
You’ll always end up in this city. Don’t hope for things elsewhere:
there’s no ship for you, there’s no road.
Now that you’ve wasted your life here, in this small corner,
you’ve destroyed it everywhere in the world.
TRANSLATED BY EDMUND KEELEY AND PHILIP SHERRARD

“Sometimes dreaming is not enough,
I need words to touch my soul,
to feel that we can fly free
above what we can conceive of
I wish I dream I could create more,
sit down, train myself to put the word
combinations on paper,
to drag them from within me”

When did I learn that poetry was a dirty word? I don’t remember, probably about the same time I realized it was what I wanted to write. So goth, so trite so overblown, such a cliche.