“Walls,” Chapter 2: “an echo came”
Walls
Without reflection, without mercy, without shame, they built strong walls and high and compassed me about. And here I sit now and consider and despair. It wears away my heart and brain, this evil fate: I had outside so many things to terminate. Oh! why when they were building could I not beware! But never a sound of building, never an echo came. Insensibly they drew the world and shut me out.
Source: Translated from the modern Greek by John Cavafy. This poem is in the public domain
(https://poets.org/poem/walls).
“an echo came”
After the first encounter, we see the walls every afternoon at dusk. Surrounded by them, we feel helpless, trapped, engulfed in regrets.
But the strange thing about the sun is that its rays are forged like spears. They are beautiful and strong and always push the day on. We see the walls and we see the rays, day in, day out. And one afternoon, propelled by an inner strength, we stand up, grab a spear, and attack the wall.
“Without reflection, without mercy, without shame,” we finally demolish these walls they gave us.
