Essential Cavafy (The Essential Poets Series) [Paperback]

Cavafy (Author), Edmund Keeley (Author)

Book Description

Series: The Essential Poets Series | Publication Date: November 21, 1996

Cavafy's mythical world presents us with an image of the good life--the life of exquisite sensuality, refined tastes, and mixed faiths--that more often than not carries within it the ripening prospect of its own death; yet in his work there appears to be no other life more worthy of celebration.... As ironist and realist, his vision is readily translatable into the language of contemporary experience; and the commitment to hedonism, to political skepticism, and to honest self-awareness... anticipates the prevailing aura of our times.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Ode: 23
The Afternoon Sun
Alexandrian Kings
The Bandaged Shoulder
A Byzantine Nobleman In Exile Composing Verses
The City
The City
Comes To Rest
Dareios
Days Of 1896
Days Of 1908
For Ammonis, Who Died At 29, In 610
From The School Of The Renowned Philosopher
The God Abandons Antony
Going Back Home From Greece
Growing In Spirit
Half An Hour
He Swears
The Horses Of Achilles
In A Large Greek Colony, 200 B.c.
In A Township Of Asia Minor
In Despair
In The Evening
In The Tavernas
In The Year 200 B.c.
Ionic
Ithaka
John Kantakuzinos Triumphs
Kaisarion
Myris: Alexandria, A.d. 340
Nero's Deadline
On The Outskirts Of Antioch
One Of Their Gods
Philhellene
A Prince From Western Libya
The Satrapy
The Ships
Since Nine O'clock
To Have Taken The Trouble
Trojans
Waiting For The Barbarians
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder® --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Horses of Achilles

When they saw Patroklos dead
--so brave and strong, so young--
the horses of Achilles began to weep;
their immortal nature was upset deeply
by this work of death they had to look at.
They reared their heads, tossed their long manes,
beat the ground with their hooves, and mourned
Patroklos, seeing him lifeless, destroyed,
now mere flesh only, his spirit gone,
defenseless, without breath,
turned back from life to the great Nothingness.

Zeus saw the tears of those immortal horses and felt sorry.
"At the wedding of Peleus," he said,
I should not have acted so thoughtlessly.
Better if we hadn't given you as a gift,
my unhappy horses. What business did you have down there,
among pathetic human beings, the toys of fate.
You are free of death, you will not get old,
yet ephemeral disasters torment you.
Men have caught you up in their misery."
But it was for the eternal disaster of death
that those two gallant horses shed their tears.

Product Details

• Paperback: 80 pages
• Publisher: Ecco (November 21, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0880015160
• ISBN-13: 978-0880015165
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 4.5 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,683,961 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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