  Poetry
This week: Constantine P. Cavafy Edited by: Stormy Lady  
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This is poetry from the minds and the hearts of poets on Writing.Com. The poems I am going to be exposing throughout this newsletter are ones that I have found to be, very visual, mood setting and uniquely done. Stormy Lady
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Candles
by Constantine P. Cavafy
The days of our future stand in front of us
like a row of little lit candles --
golden, warm, and lively little candles.
The days past remain behind us,
a mournful line of extinguished candles;
the ones nearest are still smoking,
cold candles, melted, and bent.
I do not want to look at them; their form saddens me,
and it saddens me to recall their first light.
I look ahead at my lit candles.
I do not want to turn back, lest I see and shudder
at how fast the dark line lengthens,
at how fast the extinguished candles multiply.
Hidden
by Constantine P. Cavafy
From all I've done and all I've said
let them not seek to find who I've been.
An obstacle stood and transformed
my acts and way of my life.
An obstacle stood and stopped me
many a time as I was going to speak.
My most unobserved acts,
and my writitings the most covered --
thence only they will feel me.
But mayhaps it is not worth to spend
this much care and this much effort to know me.
For -- in the more perfect society --
someone else like me created
will certainly appear and freely act.
Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis was born April 29, 1863 in Alexandria, Egypt. Cavafy later used the nameConstantine P. Cavafy. He was from a wealthy merchant family that originated from Turkey. His father died when Cavafy was eleven years old. This forced his mother to move Liverpool England, where they lived for the next five years. Then he spent a short time in Istanbul before returning to Alexandria. When his families business took a turn for the worst Cavafy turned to journalism.
His time as a journalist was short lived and he took another job working in Irrigation Services, Public Works. Cavafy worked there for thirty-four years. He took holidays to Athens, France England and Italy but other than that he lived a very routine and uneventful life. Cavafy's book of poems was published when he was forty-one years old. He was a perfectionist and had to oversee everything himself. He printed his own poems and personally delivered them to a close friend.
Several of his poems were printed in pamphlets and sent out for circulation over the years, but he never again published a new book. Cavafy's first book was republished five years after it first came out, with an additional seven poems added to it. Cavafy died on April 29, 1933 in Alexandria.
"PIIMATA" was published posthumously in 1935 in Alexandria. Over the years Cavafy's poetry has been translated into English, German, French and many other languages. He has been admired by the likes of George Seferis, E.M. Forster and T.S. Eliot who published several Cavafy's lyrics in "The Criterion," in 1924.
Footsteps by Constantine P. Cavafy
On an ebony bed decorated
with coral eagles, sound asleep lies
Nero -- unconscious, quiet, and blissful;
thriving in the vigor of flesh,
and in the splendid power of youth.
But in the alabaster hall that encloses
the ancient shrine of the Aenobarbi
how restive are his Lares.
The little household gods tremble,
and try to hide their insignificant bodies.
For they heard a horrible clamor,
a deathly clamor ascending the stairs,
iron footsteps rattling the stairs.
And now in a faint the miserable Lares,
burrow in the depth of the shrine,
one tumbles and stumbles upon the other,
one little god falls over the other
for they understand what sort of clamor this is,
they are already feeling the footsteps of the Furies.
Thank you all!
Stormy Lady
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The winner of "Stormy's poetry newsletter & contest" [ASR] is:
BITTER WINTER
It was forty below and the ice and the snow
had covered the earth with a fury of its own.
A struggle to keep warm in the midst of storm
continued as the old man began to moan.
In restless sleep, he roused up enough to keep
the meager coal fire from burning itself out.
His supply of water was running so low,
he'd gather and melt snow, without a doubt.
Just an old prospector searching for gold
in the wilderness that he came to call home,
Many a rock he turned without the shine
of the wealth that he had sought for his own.
A bitter winter, one of the worst he had seen,
as the hunger pangs started to riddle his frame.
He would try to survive, just to stay there, alive,
until the blessed warmth of the sun came again.
He pulled on his jacket, wrapped his scarf tight,
and ventured out into the bitterness of the cold.
Memories and heartbreak flooded his thoughts
as he realized the price of searching for gold.
His family back home in the mountains of Maine
would not learn of his death until the Spring.
So, the story goes, he lost his way in the storm,
on his finger was his only gold, a wedding ring.
The search for riches goes on to this very day,
satisfaction with your life cannot be measured
by the attempts to succeed, without the greed
of even more possessions to be treasured.
Countrymom
1/23/11
Honorable mention:
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Poetry: February 16, 2011 Issue [#4240]
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