C.P. Cavafy vs. Homophobes

C.P. Cavafy, 1900

Gay Star News reports that William H. Pryor, Jr., whom (not my President-elect) Trump wishes to nominate to the Supreme Court, seeks to criminalize all sex that is not between heterosexual married couples, that is, to jail homosexuals for having sex at home. Yet Trump says that marriage equality is settled. Each new man (and they are men) he has selected for a post is a bigot whose goal it is to a violate a group's civil and human rights. 

I offer you my translation of C.P. Cavafy's "Hidden Things," which appears in The Collected Poems of C.P. Cavafy: A New Translation (W.W. Norton, 2016).  

HIDDEN THINGS

From all I did and all I said

Let them not find out who I was.

An obstacle stood before me and transformed

my acts and my way of life.

An obstacle stood before me and stopped me

so often from what I was going to say.

My most unnoticed acts

and my most veiled writings—

only from these will they know me.

But maybe it’s not worth it to devote

so much care and effort to knowing me.

Later—in a more perfect society—

someone made like me

will certainly appear and act freely.

[1908]

The Collected Poems of C.P. Cavafy:A New Translation