Monotony One monotonous day follows another monotonous day, without change. The same things happen, then happen again. The same moments approach, the… - Konstantinos P. Cavafy

"Voices"

Ideal and dearly beloved voices
of those who are dead, or of those
who are lost to us like the dead.

Sometimes they speak to us in our dreams;
sometimes in thought the mind hears them.

And for a moment with their echo other echoes
return from the first poetry of our lives — like music that extinguishes the far-off night.

Why this sudden bewilderment, this confusion? (How serious people's faces have become.) Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly, everyone going home lost in thought?<p>Because night has fallen and the barbarians haven't come. And some of our men who have just returned from the border say there are no barbarians any longer.<p>Now what's going to happen to us without barbarians? Those people were a kind of solution.

Ithaca gave you the beautiful journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing more to give you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not fooled you.
Having become so wise, with so much experience,
You will have understood, by then, what these Ithacas mean.