though they knew perfectly well how worthless,
what empty words, were these king-makings.
Such a poem has, even in a translation, a “distinguished” air. It is the work of an artist who is not interested in facile beauty. In the second example, though its subject-matter is pathetic, Cavafy stands equally aloof. The poem is broken into half-lines; he is spelling out an epitaph on a young man who died in the month of Athyr, the ancient Egyptian November, and he would convey the obscurity, the poignancy, that sometimes arise together out of the past, entwined into a single ghost:
It is hard to read ... on the ancient stone.
“Lord Jesus Christ” ... I make out the word “Soul.”
“In the month of Athyr ... Lucius fell asleep.”
His age is mentioned ... “He lived years....”—
The letters KZ show ... that he fell asleep young.
In the damaged part I see the words ... “Him ... Alexandrian.”
Then come three lines ... much mutilated.