Love Poem: Cavafy
Coming back
from the ski trip
in the back of a van,
it had gotten dark
enough for
the steady hum
of the engine
to lull us all
into a deep sleep—
my best friend
and I having
the backseat
all to ourselves.
Have you ever felt
your body starting
to lean toward
its truest
intentions—head
hoping hard
for a soft landing
on your buddy’s
dozing shoulders?—
a journey in inches
that took me years.
■
Coming back
from the ski trip
in the back of a van,
it had gotten dark
enough for
the steady hum
of the engine
to lull us all
into a deep sleep—
my best friend
and I having
the backseat
all to ourselves.
Have you ever felt
your body starting
to lean toward
its truest
intentions—head
hoping hard
for a soft landing
on your buddy’s
dozing shoulders?—
a journey in inches
that took me years.
■
Hello Friends,
Some may be curious about the title of today’s poem, “Love Poem: Cavafy” by Timothy Liu, which appeared in the November 2023 issue of Poetry Magazine. Cavafy (1863-1933) was a Greek poet who published little during his lifetime, instead circulating his poems among friends — possibly because he was gay and “his erotic poems make no attempt to conceal the fact” as W.H. Auden put it. But more specifically what does Cavafy mean to Timothy Liu? Well, Liu wrote in a book review (unrelated to this poem), “As Cavafy knows, love is not the actual moment of arrival in our longed-for Ithakas but in the journey all along — an almost endless foreplay in which the climax is sort of besides the fucking point! Romantic love more a condition of prolonged edging than climactic release!” Liu’s final lines “a journey in inches // that took me years” evokes that kind of long-drawn epic — similar to the journey Cavafy describes in his poem “Ithaka.”
I hope you’re enjoying poetry month! Thanks for reading.
— Ællen
Some may be curious about the title of today’s poem, “Love Poem: Cavafy” by Timothy Liu, which appeared in the November 2023 issue of Poetry Magazine. Cavafy (1863-1933) was a Greek poet who published little during his lifetime, instead circulating his poems among friends — possibly because he was gay and “his erotic poems make no attempt to conceal the fact” as W.H. Auden put it. But more specifically what does Cavafy mean to Timothy Liu? Well, Liu wrote in a book review (unrelated to this poem), “As Cavafy knows, love is not the actual moment of arrival in our longed-for Ithakas but in the journey all along — an almost endless foreplay in which the climax is sort of besides the fucking point! Romantic love more a condition of prolonged edging than climactic release!” Liu’s final lines “a journey in inches // that took me years” evokes that kind of long-drawn epic — similar to the journey Cavafy describes in his poem “Ithaka.”
I hope you’re enjoying poetry month! Thanks for reading.
— Ællen