A long time ago I started pairing Cavafy poems with sets of images, a process I termed "cinematic poetry." Think of it as storyboarding for a micro-movie, whose script is the poem.
Cavafy poems feature succinct descriptions of spaces, places, and objects--the things I care about and design for.
"Things Ended": A Different Life, Suddenly, Descends Upon Us
This issue of Cinematic Poetry for Lockdown features a Cavafy poem titled "Things Ended," reflections on unexpected, dark, ominous events turning our lives upside down, such as our current state of affairs.
In the English translation, Edmund Keely translates "καταστροφή" (catastrophe) as "disaster," an interesting choice, also derived from the Greek. Disaster literally means "our stars are misaligned."
The slideshow below features the poem in the original Greek (left pages), and in English translation (right pages), a few verses per slide, followed by the entire set of images, and the entire poem. Click on the image for a pop-up.
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