that the drama is wholly subjective
stone knowing the form which the carver imparts it
the stone knows the form
sia Cythera, sia Ixotta, sia in Santa Maria dei Miracoli
          where Pietro Romano has fashioned the bases
Ο᾿Υ ΤΙΣ
a man on whom the sun has gone down
nor shall diamond die in the avalanche
                    be it torn from its setting
first must destroy himself ere others destroy him.

(Ezra Pound, Canto 74, lines 187–196.)

You said: “I’ll go to some other land, I’ll go to some other sea.
There’s bound to be another city that’s better by far.
My every effort has been ill-fated from the start;
my heart – like something dead – lies buried away;
How long will my mind endure this slow decay?
Wherever I look, wherever I cast my eyes,
I see all round me the black rubble of my life
where I’ve spent so many ruined and wasted years.”

You’ll find no new places, you won’t find other shores.
The city will follow you. The streets in which you pace
will be the same, you’ll haunt the same familiar places,
and inside those same houses you’ll grow old.
You’ll always end up in this city. Don’t bother to hope
for a ship, a route, to take you somewhere else; they don’t exist.
Just as you’ve destroyed your life, here in this
small corner, so you’ve wasted it through all the world.

(C. P. Cavafy, 1894–1910, trans. Daniel Mendelsohn; Mendelsohn reads it here.)

House, coffeehouses, neighborhood: setting
that I see and where I walk; year after year.

I crafted you amid joy and amid sorrows:
out of so much that happened, out of so many things.

And you’ve been wholly remade into feeling; for me.

(C. P. Cavafy, trans. Daniel Mendelsohn.)