Reset Forty-Eight, Day Thirty-Three

[rejectomorph]

Barely keeping my eyes open after midnight, probably because I got no afternoon or evening nap Sunday. Also I'm feeling a bit sick to my stomach. I hope that doesn't persist. I need to get into bed as soon as I've done this:



Sunday Verse

An Old Man

by Constantine Cavafy


At the noisy end of the café, head bent
over the table, an old man sits alone,
a newspaper in front of him.

And in the miserable banality of old age
he thinks how little he enjoyed the years
when he had strength, eloquence, and looks.

He knows he’s aged a lot: he sees it, feels it.
Yet it seems he was young just yesterday.
So brief an interval, so very brief.

And he thinks of Prudence, how it fooled him,
how he always believed—what madness—
that cheat who said: “Tomorrow. You have plenty of time.”

He remembers impulses bridled, the joy
he sacrificed. Every chance he lost
now mocks his senseless caution.

But so much thinking, so much remembering
makes the old man dizzy. He falls asleep,
his head resting on the café table.

—trans. Edmund Keeley/Philip Sherrard