The days of the future stand in front of us Like a line of candles all alight — Golden and warm and lively little candles. - Konstantinos P. Cavafy

Ideal voices and beloved
of those who have died, or of those
who are lost to us like the dead.
Sometimes, within our dreams, they speak;
sometimes the mind can hear them in our thoughts.
And with their sound for an instant return
sounds from the early poetry of our lifelike music in the night, faraway, that fades.

Had You Loved Me

If a shining ray of love should warm the darkness of my life
the first throb of my grief-stricken soul would be a happy rhapsody.
I do not dare to whisper what I wish to tell you;
that to live without you is an unbearable penalty for me.
Had you loved me...but alas, this is a deceptive hope!

Had you loved me I would see the end of tears
and hidden pains.
Indeed the guileful hesitations would no longer
dare to show their crafty face.
You would be found amid divine visions.
Rose blossoms would have adorned the bramble of life.
Had you loved me...but alas, this is a deceptive hope.

Things impolitic and dangerous: praise for Greek ideals, supernatural magic, visits to pagan temples. Enthusiasm for the ancient gods