Said an aesthete: “What distillation from magic herbs
can I find—what distillation, following the recipeof ancient Greco-Syrian magicians—that will bring back to me for one day (if its powerdoesn’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
