Читать книгу The Complete Poems of C.P. Cavafy - Daniel Mendelsohn, Daniel Mendelsohn - Страница 19

If you are among the truly elect,

watch how you achieve your predominance.

However much you’re glorified, however much

your accomplishments in Italy and Thessaly

are blazoned far and wide by governments,

however many honorary decrees

are bestowed on you in Rome by your admirers,

neither your elation nor your triumph will endure,

nor will you feel superior—superior how?—

when, in Alexandria, Theodotus brings you,

upon a charger that’s been stained with blood,

poor wretched Pompey’s head.

And do not take it for granted that in your life,

restricted, regimented, and mundane,

such spectacular and terrifying things don’t exist.

Maybe at this very moment, into some neighbor’s

nicely tidied house there comes—

invisible, immaterial—Theodotus,

bringing one such terrifying head.

[<1911; 1915]