In the City/ Special Edition
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    • Oct 13, 2022

In the City/ Special Edition

Updated: Jun 13, 2023

The City BY C. P. CAVAFY TRANSLATED BY EDMUND KEELEY

You said: “I’ll go to another country, go to another shore,

find another city better than this one. Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong and my heart lies buried like something dead. How long can I let my mind moulder in this place? Wherever I turn, wherever I look, I see the black ruins of my life, here, where I’ve spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed them totally.”

You won’t find a new country, won’t find another shore. This city will always pursue you. You’ll walk the same streets, grow old in the same neighborhoods, turn gray in these same houses.

You’ll always end up in this city. Don’t hope for things elsewhere:

there’s no ship for you, there’s no road. Now that you’ve wasted your life here, in this small corner,

you’ve destroyed it everywhere in the world.

C. P. Cavafy, "The City" from C.P. Cavafy: Collected Poems. Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Translation Copyright © 1975, 1992 by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Reproduced with permission of Princeton University Press Source: C.P. Cavafy: Collected Poems (Princeton University Press, 1975)

If a city has anything to teach, it is that people need people to love and care for one another. We are all connected. That we rely upon one another is the truth. If you ask someone to think of a city what comes to mind will likely be, long cloistered, grungy walkways, easily identifiable landmark buildings, and the marching on by of city folk with empty faces. Landmarks resonate with a city’s identity since city schemas are developed around these structures which can certainly create their own impression on those who visit. This Special Edition is dedicated to the Cities, through the eyes of artists around the world, which expresses opportunities, conveniences, and abstract lives in the city.


Presented artists:



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