I don't speak or read a word of Greek, but for twenty years I've been fascinated by the poetry of C. P. Cavafy, which I know chiefly through an old paperback Collected Poems translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard and edited by George Savidis. The translations are entirely in free verse, though the notes occasionally speak of rhymes schemes and syllable counts. Meters are never mentioned, and I regret that I have never even tried to discover whether modern Greek metrical verse uses the classical meters or is, in fact, syllabic — or perhaps this is an idiosyncrasy of Cafavy's? If my Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics were not in North Carolina I'd look it up now.
In any case, I've often tried to make metrical versions of the texts, finishing maybe a dozen over the years. Last weekend I worked on "In the Tavernas." Here is Keeley and Sherrard's translation:
In the Tavernas
I wallow in the tavernas and brothels of Beirut.
I didn't want to stay
in Alexandria. Tamides left me;
he went off with the Prefect's son to earn himself
a villa on the Nile, a mansion in the city.
It wouldn't have been right for me to stay in Alexandria.
I wallow in the tavernas and brothels of Beirut.
I live a vile life, devoted to cheap debauchery.
The one thing that saves me,
like durable beauty, like perfume
that goes on clinging to my flesh, is this: Tamides,
most exquisite of young men, was mine for two years,
and mine not for a house or a villa on the Nile.
Savidis's note: "Each line really consists of two lines of either six or seven syllables, sporadically rhymed." My version, below, is accentual dimeter and (so far) a line short of two for one. Perhaps, including the alliterations and internal rhymes, it achieves "sporadic" rhyming:
In the Tavernas
Left alone
In Alexandria,
I left for Beirut's
Bars and brothels.
Tamides left me
For a Prefect's son,
For a Nile villa,
And a city mansion.
I couldn't stay
In Alexandria.
I left for Beirut's
Bars and brothels
And a vile life,
The cheapest boys
And cheaper whiskey.
But I'm not lost.
This stays with me,
Like lasting beauty,
Or dearest scents
Still on my skin —
Two years Tamides,
Most exquisite boy,
Was mine and not
For a Nile villa
Or a city mansion.
I've put the drafts at the Draft House, though there's really not much. I don't know whether this is any good, but it came easily.
8:32:36 PM 
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