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Margaret Holt's avatar

One of my favorite poems by Constantine P. Cavafy is titled The First Step:

The First Step

The young poet Evmenis

complained one day to Theocritus:

"I've been writing for two years now

and I've composed only one idyll.

It's my single completed work.

I see, sadly, that the ladder

of Poetry is tall, extremely tall;

and from this first step I'm standing on now

I'll never climb any higher."

Theocritus retorted: "Words like that

are improper, blasphemous.

Just to be on the first step

should make you happy and proud.

To have reached this point is no small achievement:

what you've done already is a wonderful thing.

Even this first step

is a long way above the ordinary world.

To stand on this step

you must be in your own right

a member of the city of ideas.

And it's a hard, unusual thing

to be enrolled as a citizen of that city.

Its councils are full of Legislators

no charlatan can fool.

To have reached this point is no small achievement:

what you've done already is a wonderful thing."

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