Coming upon Cavafy’s 'Walls,"
One is struck not so much
By its masterful construction—
Each word firmly in its rightful place,
As befits a master word mason—but how
At the end of that brief monologue
On loss and involuntary solitude,
If the reader has indeed attended
To what is rightly taking place,
He finds himself right at home,
Next to a singular silence
He never dreamt was coming.