He was a quiet, gentle man, a man who loved peace (his country had suffered much from the wars of his predecessor), he behaved graciously toward ever… - Konstantinos P. Cavafy

As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
as is right for you who were given this kind of city,
go firmly to the window
and listen with deep emotion, but not
with the whining, the pleas of a coward;
listen — your final delectation — to the voices,
to the exquisite music of that strange procession,
and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing.

He knows he’s aged a lot: he sees it, feels it. Yet it seems he was young just yesterday. So brief an interval, so very brief. <p> And he thinks of Prudence, how it fooled him, how he always believed — what madness — that cheat who said: “Tomorrow. You have plenty of time.”

You will always end up in this city. Don’t hope for things elsewhere:
there is no ship for you, there is no road.
As you’ve wasted your life here, in this small corner,
you’ve destroyed it everywhere else in the world