Collected Poems
Cavafy worked as a clerk in Alexandria for 30 years and published his poems privately in pamphlets. His subject was the Hellenistic world, its minor kings and soldiers and lovers, rendered with an irony that hid enormous erotic heat. "Ithaka" is the most widely quoted poem about the journey's meaning (not its destination); "Waiting for the Barbarians" is the great poem about how civilizations justify their decline.
Four different translators circulate under the same title, Keeley/Sherrard, Dalven, Barnstone and Mendelsohn, and library listings often lump them together with no signal which one you're buying. Readers who prefer Keeley/Sherrard fault Barnstone for losing force exactly where it counts, pointing to “clumsiness between Barnstone's words and punctuation and the spirit of the poem.” Mendelsohn's meter-preserving choices cost something too: critics note spots where “the natural stress of the words pushes against the meter” and a literal word choice “flattens the English verse.” The Hellenistic and Byzantine history poems demand context casual readers don't bring, so they skim toward the poems with obvious contemporary appeal and skip the rest. Even sympathetic critics admit Cavafy's register shifts between formal and colloquial Greek don't survive translation at all.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
