To the Ionian Gods

Song of Ionia

Because we smashed their statues all to pieces,
because we chased them from their temples--
this hardly means the gods have died.
O land of Ionia, they love you still,
it's you whom their souls remember still.
And as an August morning's light breaks over you
your atmosphere grows vivid with their living.
And occasionally an ethereal ephebe's form,
indeterminate, stepping swiftly,
makes its way along your crested hills.


(C.P. Cavafy; trans. Mendelsohn)

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