It should be like a Californian ii: Cavafy for perspective

                                                                                    

           ..

           Rightly they will praise you: what a sincere fellow!

           But put some water in your wine: don't presume

           since (as you know) "Nothing about the Lacedaemonians."

                                                                                                    

            ..

            nor perhaps are those wounds the ones

            that you imagine (out of ignorance of his life)

            to be the dreadful blows that came from you.

            ..

C.P. Cavafy

The Unfinished Poems

  Nothing about the Lacedaemonians

  1930

  Remorse

  1925

  fragments

Daniel Mendelsohn, translation

Knopf, 2009©