Don't Leave Hungry: Fifty Years of Southern Poetry Review

Cavafy

J O A N N E D E L O N G C H A M P S Cavafy This I was told: a poet, for thirty years clerk in the Ministry of Irrigation, an Alexandrian, lived alone in a book-and-shadow-lined room, telling his worry-beads, writing by candle-light. In the evening cafés, when he spoke it was monologue; gestures elaborate, open, he scooped great ovals of air— eyes denying what hands did; half-shut, heavy-lidded, they hid their suspicions, their hungry black-blazing. He is dead and you travel the sweep of his oars. He gives you the beautiful voyage. In a vineyard of dreams, you eat his words, gorge on the Bacchic fruit. Vistor to Cavafy, if you were young then, a handsome young man— do you remember the candle lit for you in homage to luminous flesh and recall the vivacious hand shielding the ravaged face? The Late 1950s and the 1960s ❚ 15 ...