Passions and Ancient Days. Twenty One New Poems.

First UK edition. 8vo. 64pp. Red cloth, lettered in gilt to spine. Introduction, notes. Publisher's £1.25 printed price to the front flap of dustwrapper. Selected and translated by Edmund Keeley and George Savidis.

Light offsetting to endpapers, fore-edges age toned, else Near Fine in a Very Good, somewhat soiled and tanned dust jacket.

"[A] Greek gentleman in a straw hat, standing at a slight angle to the universe", in E. M. Forster's memorable phrase, Cavafy's poetry focused on marginal historical figures, furtive sexual desires, delusional aspirations, solitude, and mortality. This volume of 21 poems captures the poet's mixture of formal and idiomatic language in his frank treatment of homosexual eroticism, his re-creation of history, and his astute political ironies.