Poetry Thursday - Candles by CP Cavafy

Candles by Achilleas Droungas

Candles

 

Days to come stand in front of us

like a row of burning candles -

golden, warm, and vivid candles.

 

Days past fall behind us,

a gloomy line of burnt-out candles;

the nearest are still smoking,

cold, melted and bent.

 

I don't want to look at them: their shape saddens me,

and it saddens me to remember their original light.

I look ahead at my burning candles.

 

I don't want to turn, don't want to see, terrified,

how quickly that dark line gets longer,

how quickly one more dead candle joins another.

 

From a blog post of an exhibition, in Greece, of artists responding to Cavafy's poems. See the rest of the paintings, and some more poems, at a-place-called-space.blogspot.co.uk/.

Candles by Costas Tsoklis

Cavafy (1863-1933) lived in Alexandria for most of his life, and wrote his most important poetry after his 40th birthday. His archive is at cavafy.com. Best-known among his canon (of 154 poems) is probably Ithaka, given in four translations on the site.