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“Desires” by Constantine P. Cavafy 🇬🇷 (29 Apr 186329 Apr 1933)
Translated from the Greek by Edmund Keeley & Philip Sherrard
Like beautiful bodies of the dead who had not grown old
and they shut them, with tears, in a magnificent mausoleum,
with roses at the head and jasmine at the feet—
this is what desires resemble that have passed
without fulfillment; with none of them having achieved
a night of sensual delight, or a bright morning.