Poem for Saturday, Son and Cat, Handmaid's Tale

A Young Poet in His Twenty-Fourth Year
By Constantine Cavafy
Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard

Brain, work now as well as you can.
A one-sided passion is destroying him.
He’s in a maddening situation.
Every day he kisses the face he worships,
his hands are on those exquisite limbs.
He’s never loved before with this degree of passion.
But the beautiful fulfillment of love
is lacking, that fulfillment is lacking
which both of them must want with the same intensity.

(They aren’t equally given to the abnormal form of sensual pleasure;
only he is completely possessed by it.)

And so he’s wearing himself out, all on edge.
Then—to make things worse—he’s out of work.
He manages somehow to borrow
a little here and there (sometimes
almost begging for it) and he just gets by.
He kisses those adored lips, excites himself
on that exquisite body—though he now feels
it only acquiesces. And then
he drinks and smokes, drinks and smokes;
and he drags himself to the cafés all day long,
drags the weariness consuming his beauty.
Brain, work now as well as you can.

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I had a nice busy Bloomsday getting Adam ready to go to Greece, which involved a CVS stop for travel size items and a lot of getting things organized. Both my parents stopped by to say bon voyage before we took him to Dulles, and now he is presumably over the Atlantic while we are watching the superb season finale of The Handmaid's Tale, which has fantastic musical choices and ends pretty much where the book did so I am both excited and nervous about what they plan to do for season two.

Here are some photos of Adam's week -- visiting with his longtime friend Daniel who's here from Oklahoma (Daniel's grandfather makes a guest appearance in one pic), being stalked -- and having his computer stalked -- by Effie who wanted to stay in his lap, and being seen off by relatives!