Walls (1896).

   Without consideration, without pity,
   without shame they have built big and
   high walls around me.

   And now I sit here despairing. I think
   of nothing else: this fate gnaws at my
   mind;

   for I had many things to do outside.
   Ah why didn't I observe them when
   they were building the walls?

   But I never heard the noise or the
   sound of the builders. Imperceptibly
   they shut me out of the world.

From The Complete Poems of Cavafy, copyright 1961, renewal 1989 by Rae Dalven. reprinted by permission of Hircourt, Inc.