The collected works--including the previously unpublished final poems--of the greatest modern Greek poet, translated by the renowned critic, classicist, and award-winning author of "The Lost." Powerfully moving, searching, and wise, Cavafy's poetry and the stories he tells brilliantly make the historical personal.

It Must Have Been the Spirits

It must have been the spirits that I drank last night,
it must have been that I was drowsing, I'd been tired all day long.

The black wooden column vanished before me,
with the ancient head; and the dining- room door,
and the armchair, the red one; and the little settee.
In their place came a street in Marseille.
And freed now, unabashed, my soul
appeared there once again and moved about,
with the form of a sensitive, pleasure-bent youth-
the dissolute youth: that too must be said.

It must have been the spirits that I drank last night,
it must have been that I was drowsing, I'd been tired all day long.

My soul was released; the poor thing, it's
always constrained by the weight of the years.

My soul was released and it showed me
asympathiquestreet in Marseille,
with the form of the happy, dissolute youth
who never felt ashamed, not he, certainly.



Birth of a Poem

One night when the beautiful light of the moon
poured into my room . . . imagination, taking
something from life: some very scanty thing-
a distant scene, a distant pleasure-
brought a vision all its own of flesh,
a vision all its own to a sensual bed . . .




Remorse

Talk about it, this remorse, to soften it-
noble to be sure, but dangerously one- sided.
Don't cling to the past and torment yourself so much.
Don't give so much importance to yourself.
The wrong you did was smaller than you
imagine; much smaller.
The goodness that has brought you this remorse now
was secreted inside you even then.
See how a circumstance that suddenly
returns home to your memory explains
the reason for an action that had hardly seemed
commendable to you, but now is justified.
Don't count too absolutely on your memory;
you've forgotten much-different odds and ends-
that would have justified you quite enough.

And don't presume you knew the man you wronged
so very well. He surely had virtues you were unaware of;
nor perhaps are those deep wounds the ones
that you imagine (out of ignorance of his life)
to be the dreadful blows that came from you.

Don't count on your feeble memory.
Temper your remorse, which is always
so one-sidedly against you, it's casuistry.

---

Excerpted from C. P. Cavafy: the Unfinished Poems by C. P. Cavafy
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