The Bank of the Future
To make my arduous life secure
I will issue very few drafts
on the Bank of the Future.
I doubt if it has a large capital.
And I have begun to fear that at the first crisis
it will suddenly stop its payments.
Addition
I do not question whether I am happy or not.
But one thing I always keep gladly in mind;
that in the great addition--their addition that I abhor--
that has so many numbers, I am not one
of the many units there. I was not counted
in the total sum. And this joy suffices me.
--C.P. Cavafy, poems collected in The Complete Poems of Cavafy, trans. Rae Dalven, 1976, p. 200.
