TEXT

Constantin Cavafy (unknown photographer; signed Pacino; C.P. Cavafy Archives: Onassis Foundation.)

Text

---

Muhammed texts me on Scruff from Alexandria.
I mention Cavafy and he asks me when I’ll visit.
I think of Egypt, Shakespeare. Never, I reply,
It’s too far. Then I clock he means the one
in West Dunbartonshire and blush. Cavafy
was Greek, he says. I’m Syrian and a refugee.
Constantine Cavafy would have known just
what to say then from his careful room.
He dealt in exiles mainly, some refugees,
and had the knack for letting the window veil
blow back at the turn of a line
so we can see young Antony
glint briefly from his high abandoned
tower block, sense his fate blow out
along the second-best streets
of a second-hand city. Muhammed
is waiting for me to reply as I write
this poem. It is nineteen and a quarter
miles from Glasgow to Alexandria.

- from In Search of Dustie-Fute, (Carcanet, 2017)