Cavafy, To Sensual Pleasure

My life’s joy and incense: recollection of those hours when I found and captured sensual pleasure as I wanted it. My life’s joy and incense: that I refused all indulgence in routine love affairs.

DAYS OF 1903 I never found them again—all lost so quickly... the poetic eyes, the pale face... in the darkening street... I never found them again—mine entirely by chance, and so easily given up, then longed for so painfully. The poetic eyes, the pale face, those lips—I never found them again. 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)