This is the sixty-fifth poem from the Cavafy canon. If you wish to see the whole series you can find it on my You Tube site http://uk.youtube.com/user/cavafyinenglish 65.IN THE EVENING Experience tells me it wouldn’t have lasted long. The stronger the light the sooner it’s spent. And anyway the hand of fate soon stalled it. While it lasted it was good. It had the scent of summer roses in pure mountain air where we lay on fresh green leas body to body. An echo from those peaks came whispering back across the granite rockfalls of the past – a letter full of the passion of those mornings. I read it and re-read it as the slow light faded. I went out onto the balcony to seek some alteration of these long sad thoughts by gazing at the movement of my city – footfalls on the evening streets; the stir of the lighted shops.