Below is one of the most famous poems by C.P. Cavafy. Whenever I fear myself beginning to be pulled back to the times of great tragedy in my life, this poem has always inspired me to not step off that cliff, nor walk deeper into that dark canyon.

In "The God Abandons Antony" the poet wants us to feel through Mark Antony, the hero of the poem, the experience of losing what is most precious to us, without giving any thought to what happens next. Can we stand to gaze into the heart of our loss, and not look away?

The poem draws on the story by Plutarch in which Mark Antony, lover of Cleopatra and ruler of the Eastern Roman Empire is besieged in Alexandria by Octavian, ruler of the Wester Roman Empire. Octavian was intent on consolidating all the power into his own hands.

In Plutarch's version, the night before the city falls, Mark Antony hears an invisible troupe of musicians and singers leaving the city. At that moment he passes out , in realization that the god Bacchus, his protector and god of music wine and festivity, is deserting him: and that he Anthony is destined to lose the city.

Historically Antony and Cleopatra, on realizing that all is lost, are said to have committed suicide rather than suffer defeat. Out of this tale Cavafy, fashions his own poetic tour de force in colloquial Greek, one of the first times that the vernacular, rather than the classical form of the Greek language is used in poetry. It is one of those great poems to have reached across time and cultural divides to an international readership because from the raw historical material, Cavafy manages to capture the essence of a human predicament that every one of us is likely to face at some time or other---The loss of someone or something that has been so dear to us we can barely imagine our life without it.

Yet the poem's moral power of character stems from something deeper still, for Cavafy is urging a special kind of response to such a loss: a response that calls on our deepest reserves of dignity and courage.

When suddenly, at midnight, you hear

an invisible procession going by

with exquisite music, voices,

don't mourn your luck that is failing now,

work gone wrong, your plans

all proving deceptive-don't mourn them uselessly.

As one long prepared and graced for courage,

say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving.

Above all don't fool yourself, don't say

it was a dream, your ears deceived you:

don't degrade yourself with empty hopes like these.

As one long prepared, and graced with courage

as is right for you who was given this kind of city,

go firmly to the window

And listen with deep emotion, but not

with whining, the pleas of a coward;

listen--your final declaration--to the voices,

to the exqusite music of that strange procession,

and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing

In the dark of night Antony cannot escape what his ears are telling him, that he is in the process of losing something "exquisite" When that happens in life, it can seem as if our personal deity our very life force, is abandoning us, like the wind being blown out of our lungs.

How easy it is to blame the fates, to fall into bitterness and cynicism, or to blame oneself or others for such a sorry turn of fortune. It is useless to avoid responsibility by pointing the finger at others.

It is equally useless to mutter over your own misinformed decisions, your wrong choices, what you could have done but didn't, what you did do but should not have done. It serves nothing. Cavafy tells us, to curl up in a ball and mourn what might have been. Easy to say, difficult to do. You need firm quiet attention to forgo responses such as these in favor of Cavafy's call to a deeper truer emotion.

The midnight of Cavafy's poem, evoke a night of spiritual desolation, in which the soul feels as if even God has abandoned it. The shadow of death feels so near, purpose and meaning have vanished, ones life seems to be an empty nothingness, a tattered coat upon a stick, as Yeats puts it. This is an existential desolation, and a necessary stage of anyone's journey.

Mark Antony had shown ample courage throughout his life, and was hardly a stranger to loss. He had been a leader in many battles and wars, and had lost much of his reputation and honor because of his marriage to Cleopatra. His was a life that had given him long preparation in learning to say good-bye. He was worthy of being the lord to Alexandria, jewel of the Orient. And yet even he, it seems needed the words of the poet to give him resolve to rise to this most difficult of tasks, the full acceptance of the loss of his city, which also implied the loss of his love , Cleopatra, the loss of his position and ultimately the loss of his life. Cavafy urges him to go to the window , not shield himself in any way from what is happening and listen with deep emotion

Deep emotion does not need acting out, but it does need the willingness to allow it into your bloodstream, to let its fire fan out from the heart and find its way into the cells of the body. It spans too the whole spectrum of human feelings. For notice that the poet calls Antony to his--final delectation--he challenges him to be so open that he is even able to drink in his last deep pleasure of the music, knowing he will hear it no more.