“As you set out for Ithaka, hope your road is a long one.” (In Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard’s translation.)
Constantine Cavafy’s poem takes Odysseus’ trip home from The Odyssey and gives the advice the hero never got: don’t hurry. Don’t fear the Laestrygonians, the Cyclops or angry Poseidon; you’ll only meet them if you carry them inside you. Stop at the markets, see the cities, arrive old and rich with everything you learned on the way. Ithaka gave you the journey. If you find it poor, it didn’t fool you: by then you’ll know what Ithakas mean.
Cavafy started it in 1894 as “A Second Odyssey”, finished it in October 1910 and published it in 1911. It went global in 1994, when it was read at Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’s funeral, her choice, and the New York Times printed it in full. In Catalan it lives as a song: Viatge a Ítaca, by Lluís Llach, from Carles Riba’s translation.