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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
C. P. Cavafy
C. P. Cavafy
Constantine Cavafy was born Konstantínos Pétrou Kaváfis in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1863, the...
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FURTHER READING
Poems About Passion and Sex
9.
by E. E. Cummings
Canterbury Tales, Wife of Bath's Prologue [Excerpt]
by Geoffrey Chaucer
A Greek Island
by Edward Hirsch
A Sequence
by Leslie Scalapino
Almost There
by Timothy Liu
Antique
by Arthur Rimbaud
Arts & Sciences
by Philip Appleman
Aubade: Some Peaches, After Storm
by Carl Phillips
Blue
by May Swenson
Boston
by Aaron Smith
Carrefour
by Amy Lowell
corydon & alexis, redux
by D. A. Powell
Elegy 5
by Ovid
Erotic Energy
by Chase Twichell
First Turn to Me...
by Bernadette Mayer
Fish Fucking
by Michael Blumenthal
Fixed
by Christopher Stackhouse
He Asked About the Quality—
by C. P. Cavafy
In Praise of Shame
by Lord Alfred Douglas
Kinky
by Denise Duhamel
Libido
by Rupert Brooke
Me in Paradise
by Brenda Shaughnessy
National Nudist Club Newsletter
by Wayne Koestenbaum
No Platonic Love
by William Cartwright
Novel
by Arthur Rimbaud
Poems of Passion and Sex
Prague
by Khadijah Queen
Privilege of Being
by Robert Hass
Safe Sex
by Donald Hall
Sex
by Michael Ryan
Song
by James Joyce
Stones
by Michael Blumenthal
The Ecstasy
by Phillip Lopate
The Elephant is Slow to Mate
by D.H. Lawrence
The Hug
by Thom Gunn
To His Mistress Going to Bed
by John Donne
Wild Rose
by Bryher
XIII
by César Vallejo
Year of the Tiger
by Miguel Murphy
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Remember, Body ...

 
by C. P. Cavafy
translated by Aliki Barnstone

Body, remember not only how much you were loved, 
not only the beds where you lay, 
but also those desires for you,
shining clearly in eyes 
and trembling in a voice—and some chance 
obstacle thwarted them. 
Now when everything is the past, 
it almost looks as if you gave yourself 
to those desires as well—how they shone—
remember—in the eyes that looked at you, 
how they trembled for you in the voice—remember, body. 






From The Collected Poems of C. P. Cavafy: A New Translation by C. P. Cavafy, translated by Aliki Barnstone. Copyright © 2006 by Aliki Barnston. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
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