Diego Isaias Hernández Méndez, Convirtiéndose en characoteles / Sorcerers Changing into Their Animal Forms (detail), 2013, oil on canvas. Arte Maya Tz’utujil Collection.
The Tobacco Shop Window
Near a bright-lit tobacco shop window
they stood, among many others.
Their glances met, randomly,
and fearing, hesitant, expressed
their flesh’s outlawed desire.
A few anxious, sidewalk steps followed,
until they smiled, and nodded slightly.
And then came the closed coach . . .
the senses drawing in two bodies:
the hands united, and the lips.
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Constantine Cavafy (1863–1933) lived in Alexandria and is commonly considered the premier modern Greek poet.
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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)