C. P. Cavafy is one of the most singular and poignant voices of twentieth-century European poetry, conjuring a magical interior world through lyrical evocations of...

C. P. Cavafy is one of the most singular and poignant voices of twentieth-century European poetry, conjuring a magical interior world through lyrical evocations of remembered passions, imagined monologues and dramatic retellings of his native Alexandria�s ancient past. Figures from antiquity speak with telling interruptions from the author in such poems as �Anna Comnena� and �You did not understand�, while precise moments of history are seen with a sense of foreboding, as in �Ides of March�, �The God Abandoning Antony� and �Nero�s Deadline�. And in poems that draw on his own life and surroundings, Cavafy recalls illicit trysts or glimpses of beautiful young men in �One Night�, �I have gazed so much� and �The Café Entrance�, and creates exquisite miniatures of everyday life in �An Old Man� and �Of the Shop�.