On this wine bowl of pure silver— destined for the home of Heracleides, where discerning taste and elegance reside— I've engraved flowers, streams and thyme, and in their midst a handsome youth, naked and erotic, dangling his leg in the water still. I prayed, memory, that I'd find in you an ally strong enough to render the face of this youth, whom I loved, just as it once was. It will not be easy, as it has been some fifteen years from the day he fell, a soldier, in the battle of Magnesia.
From C. P. Cavafy: Selected Poems translated by Avi Sharon. Published by Penguin Classics. Copyright © 2008 by Avi Sharon. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.