<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

My friend Victoria sent me this poem twice. After reading it the second time, I knew I had to publish it. For not only did it personify Ithaka as female; it referred to her<\/em><\/strong> as perhaps the initiative or resolve underlying one’s need for adventure or change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon\u2014don\u2019t be afraid of them:
you\u2019ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon\u2014you won\u2019t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you\u2019re seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind\u2014
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you\u2019re seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind\u2014
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you\u2019re destined for.
But don\u2019t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you\u2019re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you\u2019ve gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her<\/strong> you wouldn’t have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won\u2019t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you\u2019ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

C. P. Cavafy, “The City” from C.P. Cavafy: Collected Poems. Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Translation Copyright \u00a9 1975, 1992 : Princeton University Press.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  My friend Victoria sent me this poem twice. After reading it the second time, I knew I had to publish it. For not only did it personify Ithaka as female; it referred to her as perhaps the initiative or resolve underlying one’s need for adventure or change. Laistrygonians, Cyclops,angry Poseidon\u2014don\u2019t be afraid of them:you\u2019ll never […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1461,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,29],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.herloom.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1429"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.herloom.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.herloom.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.herloom.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.herloom.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1429"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"http:\/\/www.herloom.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1505,"href":"http:\/\/www.herloom.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1429\/revisions\/1505"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.herloom.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.herloom.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.herloom.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.herloom.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}