Poetry: Konstantinos P. Kavafis

I’ve Looked So Much....

I’ve looked on beauty so much
that my vision overflows with it.

The body’s lines. Red lips. Sensual limbs.
Hair as though stolen from Greek statues,
always lovely, even uncombed,
and falling slightly over pale foreheads.
Figures of love, as my poetry desired them
.... in the nights when I was young,
encountered secretly in those nights.

by Konstantinos P. Kavafis (1917)


Translated from the original Greek by Edmund Keeley/Philip Sherrard