Solis

Many are exploring, not sure of what they're looking for or even of where to look. Many, perhaps more abraded by life and years, fear not knowing where they might end up. They fear ruin and, perhaps, ruins where they'd dreamed of castles. Cavafy knows what they're looking for, and how to look for it. They're looking for their own Ithaka.

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As you set out for Ithaka
hope the voyage is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
angry Poseidon -- don't be afraid of them:
you'll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
wild Poseidon -- you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope the voyage is a long one.
May there be many a summer morning when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you come into harbors seen for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind
as many sensual perfumes as you can,
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to gather stories of knowledge from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her, you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you will have understood by then what these
Ithakas mean.

"Ithaka" was written by C.P.Cavafy, Greece's most famous contemporary poet, virtual creator of modern Greek poetry, between 1896 and 1910. To the geographer and mythologist, "Ithaka" refers to a small island in the Aegean Sea. It was the home to Homer's Odyssey and the object of his odyssey. Here's a bit of Odysseus, speaking about his beloved island:

I dwell in shining Ithaca. There is a mountain there,
high Neriton, covered in forests. Many islands
lie around it, very close to each other,
Doulichion, Same, and wooded Zacynthos--
but low-lying Ithaca is farthest out to sea,
towards the sunset, and the others are apart, towards the dawn and sun.
It is rough, but it raises good men. (ch. 9, lines 19ff)

The poem is, reportedly, often read in Greece when someone begins a journey.