Remembering Cavafy in lockdown

During this time of isolation I think of Cavafy. Not only because we, like the Alexandrian poet, can exclaim "around me they built walls great and high." Nor just because "our efforts are those of the lost, like those of the Trojans," in a world of deprivation in which "a window opening will console us." I think of what has distilled inside me over the years since I read him last: the ironic, melancholy glance at his - and our - entrapment between memory and desire.

Aside from specific and well-known poems and images, Constantine Cavafy depicts a world in which nothing is certain or permanent, where joy and pleasure are brief, stolen moments that will be treasures tomorrow. Like a survivor himself, he describes colonies and empires, lives and religions the moment before they succumb to violence or the deserts of time.

We see not only great Anthony at the moment of...