Waiting for the Barbarians
What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum? The barbarians are due here today. Why isn’t anything happening in the senate? Why do the senators sit there without legislating? Because the barbarians are coming today. What laws can the senators make now? Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating. Why did our emperor get up so early, and why is he sitting at the city’s main gate on his throne, in state, wearing the crown? Because the barbarians are coming today and the emperor is waiting to receive their leader. He has even prepared a scroll to give him, replete with titles, with imposing names. Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas? Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts, and rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds? Why are they carrying elegant canes beautifully worked in silver and gold? Because the barbarians are coming today and things like that dazzle the barbarians. Why don’t our distinguished orators come forward as usual to make their speeches, say what they have to say? Because the barbarians are coming today and they’re bored by rhetoric and public speaking. Why this sudden restlessness, this confusion? (How serious people’s faces have become.) Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly, everyone going home so lost in thought? Because night has fallen and the barbarians have not come. And some who have just returned from the border say there are no barbarians any longer. And now, what’s going to happen to us without barbarians? They were, those people, a kind of solution. |
Translated by Edmund Keeley/Philip Sherrard
(C.P. Cavafy, Collected Poems. Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Edited by George Savidis. Revised Edition. Princeton University Press, 1992)
My comments:
A.
Let us all of us indulge to the “ internal and external barbarians” no more!
“Internal barbarians” : Hate ,Greed, Envy, Selfishness, Fear, Anger, Arrogance,Lust, Jealousy, Attachment, Hypocrisy , Negativity, Ignorance, Apathy, Inertia, Sloth, Lowness....
“External barbarians” : Them! The “powers that were”, are no more and yet believe they still “are”.Those “entities-gardeners” who cultivated the grounds of our soul for the “internal barbarians“ to establish themselves .So that “them, the gardeners” for mercenary reasons , finally subdue, imprison, exploit, torture and annihilate us .
All these ” barbarians” belong to the old paradigm which is useless ,tasteless,void, petty.We don't need them in order to survive.Not any more !Not at all!We can do much better without them! In fact ,we don't even have to work our way towards the new ,free , harmonious paradigm! We only have to whole heartedly WILL IT and IT shall eventually manifest ITself into our BE ing and our life with a simply wonderful quantum leap!
Maria Pelekanaki
B.
“Pure ,selfless, universal love pours forth from the eternal spring.Drenches and burns away the debris of doubt and despair.Spreads silently and deeply.Once it reaches the critical mass ,the new initiatives ,frameworks, systems and institutions are achieved!”
SSSB |