Keep Ithaka always in your mind

Ithaka

BY C. P. CAVAFY

TRANSLATED BY EDMUND KEELEY

As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll 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—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you’re 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—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.


Yes, it was worth waiting 52 years to make this journey. Captain Vangelis' cruiser, Mythos, took us to Ithaka in a leisurely fashion, along the coast of Kefalonia and out to sea, and we had two lengthy 'shore leaves' as well as two swiiming stops.

This is the yacht-filled harbour town of Kioni, where we stopped for lunch. Like the capital, Vathi, and much of Kefalonia too, nearly every building was destroyed in the earthquake of 1953, and rebuilt in the Venetian style.

Sun, sea, a garlic-and-cold-mashed-potato salad, and the prettiest beach I've ever swum on: who could ask for more? No wonder Odysseus (Ulysses) was so eager to to return to Ithaka...