Walls
C. P. Cavafy

Without reflection, without mercy, without shame,
they built strong walls and high, and compassed me out.

And here I sit now and consider and despair.

It wears away my heart and brain, this evil fate:
I had outside so many things to terminate.

Oh! Why when they were building could I not beware!

But never a second sound of building, never an echo came.
Insensibly they drew the world and shut me out.

C. P. Cavafy, born April 29, 1863, in Egypt, is one of the most
influential Greek Poet of the twentieth century. He died in 1933.