My friend shared this poem with me -- thanks Barbie Rachel!
AS MUCH AS YOU CAN
And if you cannot make your life as you want it,
at least try this
as much as you can: do not disgrace it
in the crowding contact with the world,
in the many movements and all the talk.
Do not disgrace it by taking it,
dragging it around often and exposing it
to the daily folly
of relationships and associations,
till it becomes like an alien burdensome life.
Constantine P. Cavafy --
Constantine P. Cavafy was born of Greek parents in Alexandria, Egypt, on April 17, 1863. He lived for a time in England as a boy, and later became a Greek citizen, but spent most of his life in Alexandria, where he died in 1933. His first book of poems appeared in 1904, and a second collection in 19l0. Thereafter, his poems were published in magazines in Alexandria and in Greece, and his work began to be known in translations, but he published no other books during his lifetime.
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