Ithaka!

- Constantine P. Cavafy

As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon-don't be afraid of them:
you'll never find the things like that on your way
as long as you keep thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon-you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you're seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony.
sensual perfume of every kind-
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you're destined for.
But don't hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you're old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you've gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.


WHAT I LIKE ABOUT THIS POEM....

ITHAKA - THE TITLE
I have always been enamoured by history, myth, places & journeys; One of my other favs is Ulysses (Tennyson). And the title of the poem, like the label of a wine or the name of a woman, is a fascinating precursor to what is yet to come. Sometimes in flowing harmony, sometimes in crashing discord! ;-)

THE CORE
The journey is the reward...it was Ulysses' choice to go on "a" journey and go on "this" journey...too often we miss out these journeys and and prefer to stay at the safe harbour of home...and caught in the humdrum of everyday life, we dont even realize what we are missing out...and am not just talking about a physical journey from moor to mountain, but the journey to a decision, to a career, to a relationship where we often prefer the taken path, the broken road...at these times, we need the vision to see our own Ithakas ...with firmly rooted feet ofcourse.

Also what I have come to know as my locus of control funda - what you are decides what the world is...
"you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you"
What we see and what we feel during a journey is as much as what we want to as much as what is there...a nights wait at a strange airport, a 5 minute stopover in some foreign field, a funnily named dish...think adventure!

THE IMAGERY
"Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon"
"mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony.
sensual perfume of every kind-
as many sensual perfumes as you can"
WoW!

THE END
"you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean"
In utter awe of this line...what an end! The poem ends in the same way that Ulysses would have ended his journey...a rugged man with his proud scars and Penelope, reminiscing, on the white cliffs of Greece with a cup of wine gazing at the crashing sea and the wild wild sun...as it goes down.