Ever since I first started reading the poetry of Dinos Christianopoulos several years ago, I was tempted by the idea of translating it into English. This idea was contrary to the belief I share with many people that poetry, unlike prose, does not allow good margin for linguistic and cultural replication. The meaning of poetry is not derived from definition of word but arises from a matrix of linguistic particularities: particularities of sound, percussion, register, analogy, structure and syntax. Each language has a particular obbligato of phenomena stretching along the line of its defined meanings. Poetry is the sensor and transmitter of experience voiced in the mode of this intangible obbligato of language. To render my task still more difficult Christianopoulos often indulges in word play that is sometimes impossible to translate. What is there, then, about his poems that allows them to be reproduced in English with the forcefulness and grace of the original? It is largely their directness and clarity, their prosaic elements, their seeming lack of complex imagery and symbolism. The poet, for example, who does not seek escape from reality in dreams stays clear of surrealist or expressionist techniques. His method, whether describing an emotion or an event, is to present the reader with a brief, epigrammatic narrative (verbs far outnumber adjectives) in an anti-rhetorical, anti-lyrical language. Beneath these realistic sketches, at times almost banal in their exactitude, lies an acute sensibility. This sensibility survives translation as a voice that is unique and not to be confused with that of any other poet, including C. P. Cavafy. It is evident from a number of the above observations that the two artists have in common certain features which cannot be ignored. Christianopoulos is aware of the resemblance between his own work and that of the Alexandrian poet whom he regards as the sole genius of modern Greek poetry. It is equally evident, however, that he has cr