Render...
i
"To the poet Cavafy
with deepest admiration"
wrote Karyotakis
sending his Nepenthe
(and he had a certain hope)
He looked on
indifferently
at the slanting, hurried hand,
the illegible signature.
— Keratakis?...
Another well-born young man
who wants to be Euripides!
He lit the candleholder, drank a little
wine, and did not open the book.
ii
But in twenty-eight,
with sincere feeling,
he dwells on the Elegies.
He leafs through, underlines,
perhaps tears up, imperceptibly.
— Interesting, Rica, he's good.
Not a liar, not a romantic at all.
Perhaps Mitropoulos should meet him too?
When the news came
from
Preveza, he was much shaken.
— What a pity! His whole life ahead.
Who would have said he was writing
for the last time?
"Literature
mourns! Profound,
lyrical, noble and harmonious
is Karyotakis. A great loss!"
wrote the Alexandrian paper
(likely by dictation)
