The frivolous can call me frivolous. <br />I've always been most punctilious about <br />important things. And I insist <br />that no one knows better than I do <br />the Holy Fathers, or the Scriptures, or the Canons of the Councils. <br />Whenever he was in doubt, <br />whenever he had any ecclesiastical problem, <br />Botaniatis consulted me, me first of all. <br />But exiled here (may she be cursed, that viper <br />Irini Doukaina) , and incredibly bored, <br />it is not altogether unfitting to amuse myself <br />writing six- and eight-line verses, <br />to amuse myself poeticizing myths <br />of Hermes and Apollo and Dionysos, <br />or the heroes of Thessaly and the Peloponnese; <br />and to compose the most strict iambics, <br />such as—if you'll allow me to say so— <br />the intellectuals of Constantinople don't know how to compose. <br />It must be just this strictness that provokes their disapproval.<br /><br />Constantine P. Cavafy<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-byzantine-nobleman-in-exile-composing-verses/
