Читать книгу The Complete Poems of C.P. Cavafy - Daniel Mendelsohn, Daniel Mendelsohn - Страница 76

At any rate it wouldn’t have lasted long. Years

of experience make that clear to me. But still, Fate

came and ended things in too much of a hurry.

The life of loveliness was brief.

But how powerful our perfumed unctions were,

how exquisite the bed in which we lay,

to what pleasure we gave our bodies away.

A reverberation of the days of pleasure,

a reverberation of those days drew near me,

something we two had in youth, the fire;

once more I took a letter in my hands,

and read it over and over, till the light had failed.

And I went out onto the balcony, melancholy—

went out so I might clear my head by seeing at least

a little of this town I love so well,

some little movement in the street, and in the shops.

[1916; 1917]