The Hall Mirror

The rich house had a very large, old mirror in its hall.
It could have been bought not less than eighty years ago.
One day a youth called with a parcel;
Only a tailor’s messenger, but an amateur athlete on Sundays
And a very beautiful young man.
He gave his package to someone of the house,
Who took it and went in to fetch a receipt.
The tailor’s man stood waiting alone –
He walked up to the mirror, looked at himself and set his tie straight.
In five minutes they brought him the receipt;
He took it and went away.

But the old mirror
Which in so many years
Had seen so many thousands of things and faces,
The mirror was left rejoicing
And proud to have had hold for some moments
An image of the perfect beauty in its glass.

Translated from Greek by C.H.O. Scaife in collaboration with Constantine P. Cavafy.
Originally published in The Spectator on September 27, 1935.

Constantine P. Cavafy (1863–1933) was an extraordinarily influential Egyptian-Greek poet widely considered the most distinguished voice of modern Greek literature and a towering figure of 20th-century Western poetry. Born and based mostly in the cosmopolitan hub of Alexandria, Egypt, his work uniquely blended historical realism, profound skepticism, and deeply personal, intimate expressions of homosexual desire. He spent over thirty years working as a quiet clerk in the Irrigation Service of the Egyptian Ministry of Public Works while writing poetry in his spare hours