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profile/constantine-cavafy.md
Translated from the Greek by Theoharis C. Theoharis
Published: Thu Oct 15 1998
Diego Isaias Hernández Méndez, Convirtiéndose en characoteles / Sorcerers Changing into Their Animal Forms (detail), 2013, oil on canvas. Arte Maya Tz’utujil Collection.
Since Nine O’Clock

Half past twelve. The time has passed quickly
since nine when I lit the lamp,
and sat down here. I’ve sat without reading
and without speaking. With whom could I speak,
all alone in this house?

The specter of my young body,
from when I lit the lamp at nine,
has come and found me and reminded me
of closed-up, aromatic chambers,
and past sensual delight—what brazen pleasure!
And it has also placed directly in my sight
streets which have now become unrecognizable,
lovely, crowded nightclubs which have closed,
and theaters and cafes that existed, once.

The specter of my young body
came and also brought to me the source of sorrows:
the grief of familial life, separations,
feelings for those I came from and belong to,
feelings for the dead esteemed so slightly.

Half past twelve. How the time has passed.
Half past twelve. How the years have passed.

See what's inside AGNI 48

Constantine Cavafy (1863–1933) lived in Alexandria and is commonly considered the premier modern Greek poet.

Theoharis Constantine Theoharis is an Associate Professor in the Literature faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of Joyce’s Ulysses: An Anatomy of the Soul (U. of North Carolina Press, 1988), and editor of a  critical series forthcoming from Harvard University Press. (updated 1990)
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