will you live?
In Cavafy's tragic appreciation of the world, our failings and vanities are not the opposite of human dignity but at its heart. Here is Stuart Dischell's jaunty, comic, American version of something similar:
Days of Me
When people say they miss me,
I think how much I miss me too,
Me, the old me, the great me,
Lover of three women in one day,
Modest me, the best me, friend
To waiters and bartenders, hearty
Laugher and name rememberer,
Proud me, handsome and hirsute
In soccer shoes and shorts
On the ball fields behind MIT,
Strong me in a weightbelt at the gym,
Mutual sweat dripper in and out
Of the sauna, furtive observer
Of the coeducated and scantily clad,
