Reading Cavafy: I

"Let us speak, let us speak--silence does not suit us."

I hope to let out a silent thunder,
eyes bearing down upon the stiff text
like great googly interruptions.

But how to strafe past the great
illusions to Greek culture, places
and people I find greatly boring--

how do I flush them out like their
sea flushes their gods to and from
the great pearls of the unconscious?

Outside it is raining. Right here,
in this bedroom, haunted by me and others,
there hellishly slumps a radiator heatwave.