A month passes by and brings another month. Easy to guess what lies ahead: all of yesterday’s boredom. And tomorrow ends up no longer like tomorrow. - Konstantinos P. Cavafy

Don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now,
work gone wrong, your plans
all proving deceptive — don’t mourn them uselessly.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving.
Above all, don’t fool yourself, don’t say
it was a dream, your ears deceived you:
don’t degrade yourself with empty hopes like these.

The people going by would gaze at him, and one would ask the other if he knew him, if he was a Greek from Syria, or a stranger. But some who looked more carefully would understand and step aside; and as he disappeared under the arcades, among the shadows and the evening lights, going toward the quarter that lives only at night, with orgies and debauchery, with every kind of intoxication and desire, they would wonder which of Them it could be, and for what suspicious pleasure he had come down into the streets of Selefkia from the August Celestial Mansions.

But the old mirror that during all the many years / of its existence had looked upon / thousands of objects and faces, / the old mirror was happy now, / filled with the satisfaction that it had received, / if only for a few minutes, beauty in all its perfection.