The city
by C. P. Cavafy
translated By Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard
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.
And now for the Greek original:
Η πόλις
Είπες· “Θα πάγω σ’ άλλη γη, θα πάγω σ’ άλλη θάλασσα.
Μια πόλις άλλη θα βρεθεί καλλίτερη απ’ αυτή.
Κάθε προσπάθεια μου μια καταδίκη είναι γραφτή·
κ’ είν’ η καρδιά μου -σαν νεκρός- θαμένη.
Ο νους μου ως πότε μες στον μαρασμόν αυτόν θα μένει.
Οπου το μάτι μου γυρίσω, όπου κι αν δω
ερείπια μαύρα της ζωής μου βλέπω εδώ,
που τόσα χρόνια πέρασα και ρήμαξα και χάλασα.”
Καινούργιους τόπους δεν θα βρεις, δεν θάβρεις άλλες θάλασσες.
Η πόλις θα σε ακολουθεί. Στους δρόμους θα γυρνάς
τους ίδιους. Και στες γειτονιές τες ίδιες θα γερνάς·
και μες στα ίδια σπίτια αυτά θ’ ασπρίζεις.
Πάντα στην πόλι αυτή θα φθάνεις. Για τα αλλού -μη ελπίζεις-
δεν έχει πλοίο για σε, δεν έχει οδό.
Ετσι που τη ζωή σου ρήμαξες εδώ
στην κώχη τούτη την μικρή, σ’ όλην την γη την χάλασες.
Κωνσταντίνος Π. Καβάφης
Update: As evident from the above, I was inspired to start posting poems of my favourite Greek poet, and one of the most important poets from Greece, but also from Europe, in the 20th century. Constantine P. Cavafy spent most of his life in Alexandria, but he was both passionately Greek, and inexorably cosmopolitan. I will not try to summarize his biography here; Google can easily take care of that for you if you are interested. But I will say that his poetry has been translated into numerous languages and published all over the world, so I encourage everyone to go out and discover it in any form or language you choose.
