Читать книгу The Complete Poems of C.P. Cavafy - Daniel Mendelsohn, Daniel Mendelsohn - Страница 101

On this mixing-bowl of the purest silver—

which was made for the home of Heracleides,

where great elegance always is the rule—

note the stylish blooms, and the brooks, the thyme;

and in the middle I put a beautiful young man,

naked, sensuous; he still keeps one leg,

just one, in the water.— O Memory, I have begged

to find in you the best of guides, that I might make

the face of the youth I loved as it really was.

This has proved to be very difficult since

some fifteen years have passed since the day on which

he fell, a soldier, in the defeat at Magnesia.

[1903; 1912; 1921]