Epilogue: C. P. Cavafy, Walls

Abstract

With no consideration, no pity, no shame,
they have built walls around me, thick and high.

And now I sit here feeling hopeless.
I can’t think of anything else: this fate gnaws my mind

because I had so much to do outside.
When they were building the walls, how could I not have noticed!

But I never heard the builders, not a sound.
Imperceptibly they have closed me off from the outside world. 

Translated by Edmund Keeley/Philip Sherrard
(C.P. Cavafy, Collected Poems. Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip
Sherrard. Edited by George Savidis. Revised Edition, Princeton University
Press, 1992)