Ηow quickly one more dead candle joins another
Candles
Days to come stand in front of us,
like a row of burning candles –
golden, warm, and vivid candles.
Days past fall behind us,
a gloomy line of burnt-out candles;
the nearest are still smoking,
cold, melted, and bent.
I don’t want to look at them: their shape saddens me,
and it saddens me to remember their original light.
I look ahead at my burning candles.
I don’t want to turn, don’t want to see, terrified,
how quickly that dark line gets longer,
how quickly one more dead candle joins another.
Constantine P. Cavafy (1899)
C.P. Cavafy, Collected Poems, Translated by Edmund Keely and Philip Sherrard, Edited by George Savidis,, Chatto &Windus, London 1998
