So much I gazed on beauty,
that my vision is replete with it.

Contours of the body. Red lips. Voluptuous limbs.
Hair as if taken from greek statues;
always beautiful, even when uncombed,
and it falls, slightly, over white foreheads.
Faces of love, as my poetry
wanted them…. in the nights of my youth,
in my nights, secretly, met….

– TRANSLATED BY EDMUND KEELEY

C. P. Cavafy, “The City” from C.P. Cavafy: Collected Poems. Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Translation Copyright © 1975, 1992 by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard.

Source: C.P. Cavafy: Collected Poems (Princeton University Press, 1975)

Another translation posted by Daniel Mendelsohn on X:

I’ve Gazed So Much –

At beauty I’ve gazed so much
that my vision is filled with it.

The body’s lines. Red lips. Limbs made for pleasure.
Hair as if it were taken from Greek statues:
always lovely, even when it’s uncombed,
and falls, a bit, upon the gleaming brow.
Faces of love, exactly as
my poetry wanted it… in the nights of my youth,
secretly encountered in my nights….

Voices, loved and idealized,
of those who have died,
or of those lost for us like the dead.

Sometimes they speak to us in dreams;
sometimes deep in thought the mind hears them.

And with their sound for a moment return
sounds from our life’s first poetry—
like music at night, distant, fading away.

– C.P. CAVAFY: Collected Poems Revised Edition, translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, edited by George Savidis. Translation copyright © 1975, 1992 by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Princeton University Press. 

Another translation posted by Daniel Mendelsohn on X:

Voices

Imagined voices, and beloved, too,
of those who died, or of those who are
lost unto us like the dead.

Sometimes in our dreams they speak to us;
sometimes in its thought the mind will hear them.

And with their sound for a moment there return
sounds from the first poetry of our life –
like music, in the night, far off, that fades away.