C. P. Cavafy was born in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1863, to parents from Constantinople. He lived a largely reclusive life, never publishing a collection of poetry during his lifetime. However, he had a long friendship with E. M. Forster who introduced Cavafy’s work to a generation of English-speaking poets, most notably T. S. Eliot. Cavafy died of throat cancer in Alexandria in 1933.

Also By This Author

• For the Shop
• When the Watchman Saw the Light
• January, 1904

Aliki Barnstone is working on a new translation of C. P. Cavafy, entitled One of Their Gods: The Collected Poems of C. P. Cavafy. Her books of poetry include Blue Earth (Iris, 2004), Wild With It (Sheep Meadow, 2002), and Madly in Love (Carnegie Mellon, 1997). She teaches in the International Creative Writing Program at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.