WALLS — Constantine P. Cavafy   1 comment

Konstantinos_Kavafis-72Constantine P. Cavafy

My good friend Tom Marley recently introduced me to Cavafy’s poetry. 

 

“The poet makes a personal yet universal confession about the walls that bring suffocation to his life.
These walls are related to the social structure, the economy, religion, and much more.
The worst thing is not the existence of these walls, of these limitations of the free development
but the fact that the walls were created before us, so we cannot even notice
their existence and fight against them.”

Walls

With no consideration, no pity, no shame,
they have built walls around me, thick and high.
And now I sit here feeling hopeless.
I can’t think of anything else: this fate gnaws my mind –
because I had so much to do outside.
When they were building the walls, how could I not have noticed!
But I never heard the builders, not a sound.
Imperceptibly they have closed me off from the outside world.

— Constantine P. Cavafy

 

 

 

One response to “WALLS — Constantine P. Cavafy

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  1. Wow! So fitting for what is happening today. People are unaware that they are being shut off from the outside world by the walls that the government is creating. In a few years, they will wish they had been more observant.

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