As you’ll have heard, I’m no beginner. I’ve handled a lot of stone in my time, and in my own country, Tyana, I’m pretty well known. Actually, senators here have also commissioned a number of statues from me. Let me show you a few of them. Notice this Rhea: reverential, all fortitude, very old. Notice Pompey. And Marius here, and Paulus Aemilius, and Scipio Africanus. The likeness as close as I could make it. And Patroklos (I still have to touch him up a bit). Near those pieces of yellowish marble there stands Kaisarion. And for some time now I’ve been busy working on a Poseidon. I’m studying his horses in particular: how to shape them exactly. They have to be made so light that it’s clear their bodies, their legs, are not touching the earth but galloping over water. But here’s my favorite work, wrought with the utmost care and feeling. This one—it was a summer day, very hot, and my mind rose to ideal things— this one came to me in a vision, this young Hermes.
Reprinted from C.P. CAVAFY: Collected Poems Revised Edition, translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, edited by George Savidis. Translation copyright © 1975, 1992 by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Princeton University Press. For reuse of these translations, please contact Princeton University Press.
The Canon