Memory, keep those eyes just as they were. / And memory, whatever you can salvage of that passion of mine, / whatever you can, bring back to me tonig… - Konstantinos P. Cavafy

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.

If you are one of the truly elect, be careful how you attain your eminence.

You said: “I’ll go to another country, go to another shore,
find another city better than this one.
Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong
and my heart lies buried as though it were something dead.
How long can I let my mind moulder in this place?
Wherever I turn, wherever I happen to look,
I see the black ruins of my life, here,
where I’ve spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed them totally.”

You won’t find a new country, won’t find another shore.
This city will always pursue you. You will walk
the same streets, grow old in the same neighborhoods,
will turn gray in these same houses.
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.