Constantine P. Cavafy remains one of the towering figures in poetry of the past 100 years, considered the equal of Yeats or Rilke. Although his output was small (only 200 poems in his “complete works”) he has had an enormous impact on later generations of poets. His reputation was built on two divided currents: his historical poems, reclaiming Grecian antiquity; and his more personal, erotic poems of memory and desire, passion and loss –– both, however, infused with a tone of irony and disenchantment.