Ithaka by C.V. Cafavy

My favorite poem, and the recipe for my life.
— David Perry

Ithaka: 
by C.V. Cafavy

As you set out for Ithaka, hope the voyage is a long one: full of adventure, full of discovery.

Laistrogonians and Cyclops, angry Poseidon, you won’t find them as long as a rare excitement stirs your spirit and your body.

Laistrogonians and Cyclops, wild Poseidon – you won’t encounter them unless you carry them along inside you; unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope the voyage is a long one. 

May there be many a summer morning when with what excitement, what joy, you sail into harbors seen for the first time. 

May you visit Phoenician trading stations and purchase fine things: mother of pearl, ivory, ebony and sensuous perfumes — as many sensuous perfumes as you can. 

And may you stop at many Egyptian cities to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind. Arriving there is what you are destined for, but do not hurry the journey at all. Better that it lasts for years so that you are old by the time you reach the Island, wealthy with everything you have learned along the way, not expecting Ithaka to make you rich. She has nothing left to give you now.

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