CarrollBlog 8.6
The City
C.P. Cavafy
You said: I will go to some other place, some other sea,
find another city better than this one.
Every move I make is doomed to come out wrong
and my heart, like something dead, lies buried inside me.
How long is my mind to wither away like this?
Wherever I turn, wherever I look,
I see the black ruin of my life, here,
where I have spent so many years- wasted, destroyed them
utterly.
You will not find some other place, some other sea.
The city will follow you. And you will walk
the same streets, grow old in the same neighborhood,
in these same houses watch yourself turn gray.
You will always end up in this city. Do not look for things
elsewhere:
there is no ship for you, no road out.
Just as you have ruined your life here, in this small corner,
you have destroyed it now everywhere in the world.