The Alexandrian Greek poet Constantine Cavafy (1863-1933) is a towering figure of twentieth-century literature. No modern poet brought so vividly to life the history and culture of Mediterranean antiquity; no writer dared break, with such taut energy, the taboos of his time surrounding homoerotic desire. In this edition, award-winning translator and editor Daniel Mendelsohn has made a selection of the poet's best-loved works, including such favorites as "Waiting for the Barbarians," "Ithaca," and "The God Abandons Antony." Accompanied by Mendelsohn's explanatory notes, the poems collected here cover the vast sweep of Hellenic civilization, from the Trojan War through Cavafy's own lifetime. Whether advising Odysseus as he returns home to Ithaca or portraying a doomed Marc Antony on the eve of his death, Cavafy's poems make the historic profoundly and movingly personal.

Preface  PUBLISHED POEMS  POEMS 1905–1915  The City The Satrapy But Wise Men Apprehend What Is Imminent Ides of March Finished The God Abandons Antony Theodotus Monotony IthacaAs Much As You Can Trojans King Demetrius The Retinue of Dionysus Alexandrian Kings Philhellene The Steps The Tomb of Lysias the Grammarian Tomb of Eurion Dangerous Manuel Comnenus In the Church Very Rarely In Stock Painted Morning Sea Song of IoniaIn the Entrance of the Cafe´ One Night Come Back He Swears I Went Chandelier  POEMS 1916–1918  Since Nine -Comprehension CaesarionNero’s Deadline One of Their Gods Tomb of Lanes Tomb of Iases In a City of Osrhoene Tomb of Ignatius In the Month of Hathor For Ammon, Who Died at 29 Years of Age, in 610 Whenever They Are Aroused To Pleasure I’ve Gazed So Much In the Street The Window of the Tobacco Shop Passage In Evening Gray Below the House The Next Table Remember, Body  POEMS 1919–1932  The Afternoon Sun To Stay Of the Jews (50 A.D.) Aboard the Ship Young Men of Sidon (400 A.DThat They Come-Darius Their Beginning Melancholy of Jason, Son of Cleander: Poet in Commagene: 595 A.D. I Brought to Art From the School of the Renowned Philosopher Those Who Fought on Behalf of the Achaean League In an Old Book In Despair Theater of Sidon (400 A.D.) Before Time Could Alter Them He Came to Read – Of Colored GlassThe 25th Year of His Life On the Italian Seashore In the Boring Village Cleitus’s Illness In a Municipality of Asia Minor Priest of the Serapeum In the Taverns Sophist Departing from Syria Julian and the Antiochenes Days of 1896 Two Young Men, 23 to 24 Years Old Days of 1901 A Young Man, Skilled in the Art of the Word – in His 24th Year Portrait of a Young Man of Twenty-Three Done by His Friend of the Same      Age, an Amateur Potentate from Western Libya Days of 1909, ’10, and ’11 Myres: Alexandria in 340 A.D. Beautiful, White Flowers as They Went So Well Come Now, King of the Lacedaemonians In the Same Space The Mirror in the Entrance He Asked About the Quality –According to the Formulas of Ancient Greco-Syrian Magicians Days of 1908  From THE SENGOPOULOS NOTEBOOK  Voices Longings Candles An Old Man Prayer Old Men’s Souls The First Step Interruption Thermopylae Che Fece...Il Gran Rifiuto The Windows Walls Waiting for the Barbarians  REPUDIATED POEMS  Builders Bard Timolaus the Syracusan Sweet Voices Hours of Melancholy Oedipus Near an Open Window Horace in Athens The Tarentines Have Their Fun  UNPUBLISHED POEMS  To Stephanos Skilitsis“Nous n’osons plus chanter les roses”The Hereafter In the Cemetery Epitaph Dread In the House of the SoulJulian at the Mysteries Impossible Things Garlands Addition Strengthening September of 1903 December 1903 January of 1904 On the Stairs In the Theatre Poseidonians Hearing of Love That’s How Theophilus Palaeologus And I Got Down and I Lay There in Their Beds Simeon The Bandaged Shoulder From the Drawer The Regiment of Pleasure (prose poem) Ships (prose poem)  THE UNFINISHED POEMS  The Item in the Paper It Must Have Been the Spirits And Above All Cynegirus On the Jetty After the Swim Birth of a Poem The Photograph Remorse CrimeOf the Sixth or Seventh Century Abandonment Nothing About the Lacedaemonians Company of Four Agelaus  NOTES