After nearly seven decades
I still own nothing
Am sure of nothing.
Some god has granted me
The grace of ignorance
To go with my compulsive curiosity.
That’s the hell of it, isn’t it?
An irony so relentless
As to be hilarious,
And we, laughing to split our sides,
Tumbling headlong into sweet oblivion,
Or not; no one living will ever know.
A flock of school children
Off on a morning jaunt
Startling blackbirds
Children’s voices
Laughing
Squealing
Exclaiming
Surprise
Like orchid petals
Each in a new direction
Each unexpected
In winter days toward twilight
Supper looming and the long call
Of parental care avoided
Like spoonfuls of castor oil
We’d set off on grand adventures
Down the alleyways
Championed by dogs, evaded by cats,
Amid the fine scent of burning garbage
Hunting urban treasures:
Radio parts, discarded syringes,
A cache of vacuum tubes,
Ground glass whiskey tops,
And once, an entire television
Bereft of its fine cabinet,
Emptied of all diversion,
And cast forlornly, contemptuously, aside.
A poem about travel – or not. Kafavy wrote this in Alexandria, where he was born, after returning from a brief exile in Constantinople.
As you set out for Ithaka
hope the voyage is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
Hope the voyage is a long one.
May there be many a summer morning when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you come into harbors seen for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.
Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard
exiles child 