Gift of a prior class

       And if I can't speak about my love -
       if I don't talk about your hair, your lips, your eyes,
       still your face that I keep within my heart,
       the sound of your voice that I keep within my mind,
       the days of September rising in my dreams,
       give shape and color to my words, my sentences,
       whatever theme I touch, whatever thought I utter.

       Constantine Cavafy wrote at precisely

       the right time, in precisely the right

       dialect to be ignored, in precisely

       the most advantageously unregulated in-

       stant in the history of a chronically

       despotic kingdom, to coincide with the

       Class at my university, who gave their

       gift of the dormitory of my final three

       years there. Everyone knew where we were,

       and might have read Greek with his trans-

       lator. The poetry already'd become ours.

       Who, but the poet, lets go of his time?

       

       

C.P. Cavafy

Collected Poems

  December, 1903

George Savidis

  editor

Edmund Keeley and

  Philip Sherrard

  translation

Princeton University Press, 1975©

Class of 1903 Hall