a citizen of the city of ideas

For reasons that don't really need exploring at this juncture, I totally failed to post any Cavafy while I was actually in Greece. (Mostly, I couldn't decide what the right poem was, and then I gave up and decided to save him for later.) I want to remedy that now, however, because Cavafy is wonderful.

The young poet Eumenes
complained one day to Theocritus:
“I have been writing for two years now
and I have done only one idyll.
It is my only finished work.
Alas, it is steep, I see it,
the stairway of Poetry is so steep;
and from the first step where now I stand,
poor me, I shall never ascend.”
“These words,” Theocritus said,
“are unbecoming and blasphemous.
And if you are on the first step,
you ought to be proud and pleased.
Coming as far as this is not little;
what you have achieved is great glory.
For even this first step
is far distant from the common herd.
To set your foot upon this step
you must rightfully be a citizen
of the city of ideas.
And in that city it is hard
and rare to be naturalized.
In her market place you find Lawmakers
whom no adventurer can dupe.
Coming as far as this is not little;
what you have achieved is great glory.”

—C. P. Cavafy (1863-1933), written sometime before 1911. In this case translated by Rae Dalven, and from The Complete Poems of Cavafy, expanded edition (San Diego: Harcourt, 1976).