A Gay Affair Alexandria 340 AD

Written & Read by Charles Bryant,
being his English verse adaptation of Cavafy's Greek poem 'Myres.'


The golden haired youth with the smiling face was dead;
dear Myres gone, forever gone; and I alone.

Leaping like fire across our teeming city
came the burning news of Myres' death
to light its conflagration in my heart.
The sensation seized me of falling into the sea
down and down to the littered sandy bottom
where faceless creatures crawled the darkling deep.

Thanatos' shadow covered him. His blond hair,
his brilliant green eyes glowed less and less
each minute as the cold increased, icing
his soft warm limbs, freezing the arms of love.
My friend was dead and my companions mourned;
our company had lost its leading soul.
Inwardly sobbing I ran to that dark house,
dark before to me, now doubly dark -
home to his horrible christian family
revilers of our bright gods and of ourselves,
the black soil whence my friend so brilliantly flowered.
I usually avoid the christian quarter,
known for an unbeliever, morally blank.
A revenant, I haunted the entrance hall,
subject to their disapproving glances;
they crossed themselves as though I were unclean.
I had seen that gesture many times before,
so full of pride, crammed with false assertion,
debarring us and them from close communion.

The door to the room where he lay was was left half open:
I glimpsed rich rugs, gleaming gold and silver vessels -
presumably part of their stranger ritual,
celebrating death as never life.
I wondered if his face were visible
and longed to hold him in a last embrace,
to place a last kiss on that marble forehead
(marble living, doubly marble now),
merely to whisper 'farewell'. But I was barred;
stood in the passage copiously weeping,
an object of derision, being pagan.

The golden haired youth with the smiling face was dead;
dear Myres gone, forever gone; and I alone.

I thought: our companions' outings meetings riotous parties
would all be hollow now that he was dead.
For me his was the spirit of our revels
laughing drinking reciting poetry
with perfect pitch and rhythm; none other like him.
Without him all was mockery, in vain,
my beautiful Myres gone, his light extinguished.
The whole day was black, the sun was dark.
Suspended through the hallway dressed in weeds,
ancient spiders crawling their broken web,
the old women discussed my absent friend
with all the fervour of the new converted:
how at the end he called upon the Saviour
grasping that hideous crucifix, their charm.
Four priests crossed the threshold also in black
crying aloud to their outrageous God.

The golden haired youth with the smiling face was dead;
dear Myres gone, forever gone; and I alone.

It wasn't a secret. We had all known that Myres
was a christian. The year before last year
he came to us in friendship. Never held himself aloof;
indulged especially in those games our lot delights in;
threw his money around like no tomorrow.
Couldn't give a toss about the cost.
Fought passionately on our side in a fight.
He rarely spoke about his own religion.
When we suggested he accompany us
to the Serapeum (a place the Christians shun),
unamused he sullenly turned away.
Another time - now it comes rushing back
with such a sense of sickness, void and black -
while we were pouring wine to Lord Poseidon
he walked far off along the sounding shore,
seeming to feel the need to stand apart.
A further instance (how they crowd upon me!) -
when we prayed for the protection of Apollo
I heard him murmur softly "Yet not me....."
his face contorted, his demeanour changed.

The golden haired youth with the smiling face was dead;
dear Myres gone, forever gone; and I alone.

In the house of death the priests' hoarse voices
rang aloud in singsong invocations.
Other voices answered in sad farewell
and I could feel him going far away
my friend no longer, solely Christian now,
divided from me by a bitter stream.
Stumbling from that odious place in panic
I realised that I had never known him,
had only imagined I held him in my heart.

The golden haired youth with the smiling face was dead;
dear Myres gone, forever gone; and I alone.