only one person ever gives me lifting words when i ask for them, and so readily and generously does he give them i am abashed and grateful.

Unknown -a stranger in Antioch- the man from Edessa
writes and writes. And at last, there,
the final canto's done. That makes

eighty-three poems in all. But so much writing,
so much versifying, the intense strain
of phrasing in Greek, has worn the poet out,
and now everything has gone stale.

But a thought suddenly brings him out of his dejection:
the sublime "Ecce homo"
which Lucian once heard in his sleep.

                         
                                         Constantine P. Cavafy