Said an aesthete: “What distillation from magic herbs

can I find—what distillation, following the recipe

of ancient Greco-Syrian magicians—

that will bring back to me for one day (if its power

doesn’t last longer) or even for a few hours,

my twenty-third year,

bring back to me my friend of twenty-two,
—C. P. Cavafy, translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard

Parading