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XXII. WAITING FOR BARBARIANS
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Included on this page we have the famous ‘Barbarians’, one of Cavafy’s best-known poems. Whatever the mode of conveyance (the metrics and the translations and the rewriting) we cannot help but get the message. Here is an effete society of loungers so utterly bored that they would put up with anything just to fill their dull days with some excitement.
Or: they think that the inevitable is inevitable and decide to make the most of it.
Or: we are closely observing the end of civilisation; or else a lacuna between one civilisation and a succeeding one.
As for the place, the actual town……..I imagine it as one of those tiny dispersed Greek city-states on the edge of Asia, a small walled town somewhere with a client king (Cavafy can be fairly withering about these ‘kings’!)…….in Bithynia perhaps? Harking back to my previous poems on this website, this is certainly just the sort of place that Antinous would have been brought up in. Imagine him then among the excited populace gathered to await the coming of the barbarian horsemen, in perhaps his pre- or just-teen years.
My rewriting is a dozen or so lines longer than Cavafy’s text. I have inevitably added ‘atmosphere’ (without which I cannot breathe) and some small explanatory matter. The verse is as good as I can make it.
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15. WALLS
they did not seek my permission
to brick me in, to entomb me
before they built these massive walls around me.
i brood forlornly, without hope
contemplating my ignominious fate.
i had plans, such ambitious plans.
while i crouched here intensely plotting
they were building brick on brick
and stone on stone around me.
i never heard a thing, was unaware
how quickly and how stealthily they sealed me.
16. WAITING FOR BARBARIANS
'why are we all waiting in the forum?'
'it’s said the savage hordes will come today
thundering wildly into the city
on their diminutive fiery ponies
looting and raping girls, boys and women.'
'why don't the senate act?
why sit dumbly in the silent House
awaiting the inevitable?'
'because the barbarian horsemen are coming.
what is there for our useless senate to do?
when the vandals arrive they'll take everything over -
everything that's left after the looting.'
'why did the emperor rise so early
put on his crown
and sit on his gilded throne
inside the city gate?'
'the Destroyers will soon be here.
the emperor wishes to receive them courteously
with an elaborate parchment to hand their warlord
granting him the most grandiloquent titles.'
'why are these solemn civic dignitaries
unbecomingly shuffling about the forum
in their most costly raiment,
bracelets studded with amethysts
and rings that flash with emeralds?
why do they carry slender staffs of office
elaborately worked with gold and silver?'
'because your scruffy rough barbarian
is much impressed by dazzling baubles.'
'why do not our plausible rhetoricians
join us? they could make impressive speeches.'
'those grunting savages are like animals
and will not endure their windy lectures.'
'what's happening now?
everyone looks troubled,
face staring into face, awaiting a signal.
there's movement in the crowd.
the square is emptying.
people seem to be going home.
what a disappointing anticlimax!'
'it's getting dark. nothing has occured,
no barbarians, no raping and no looting.
there's a rumour going round
that it was all a hoax, a stupid misunderstanding,
a piece of old wives' gossip
and tittle-tattle exaggeration.
one even said the vandals no longer exist,
the savage hordes were years ago disbanded.'
'without them, this was all purposeless.
the day's excitement has evaporated.
what a let-down now they are not coming!
a chill wind is blowing through the forum
off the empty plain.'
17. APOLLO’S TREACHERY
at Peleus and Thetis’ marriage
the smiling god arose at the wedding-feast,
Apollo rose and blessed the happy couple.
anticipating their son-to-come,
their son Achilles, unborn, as yet unnamed,
he prophesied:
‘he shall never fall sick and will live long.’
Thetis was chuffed
knowing Apollo for an oracle
and her child safe,
her son as yet unnamed, as yet unborn.
years passed. the unborn son was born and grew,
the countryside astonished at his beauty.
all Thesally sang his praises
lauded his well-set thews and handsome face.
Thetis remembered what the god had said
and felt secure: Achilles would live long.
one day the horrified mother heard
her lovely and loving son lay dead at Troy.
she ripped her purple raiment,
tore off and cast away her ringing bracelets
and her glittering rings
in her great grief.
recalling his oracle at her wedding,
she could hardly believe Apollo’s remembered words
the poet Apollo, the seer, the lord of secrets -
how could he have been so utterly utterly wrong?
and then the old men told her,
the wise men said:
‘Apollo himself it was who killed your son;
he and the Trojans at the wall of Troy
killed your beautiful son
Achilles, the pride of Thesally, your boy.’
think: perhaps the seer, at the feast, was unaware
that the son-to-come would be so tall and fair;
perhaps he failed to foresee
how all of Thesally
would sing Achilles’ praises, shine with his light
outsparkling the immortal jealous gods.
18. DEATH AND FUNERAL OF SARPEDON
Sarpedon, son of Zeus and Laodamia;
Sarpedon, king of the Lycians,
their leader against the warring Greeks;
Sarpedon faithful ally of the Trojans;
Sarpedon, though a foreigner, friend of Troy
for whom, and for his glory and his fame,
he fighting died -
Zeus mourns the loss of his lovely son Sarpedon
killed by Patroclus, speared to the beating heart.
Sarpedon lies dead in the dust, covered with blood.
many men were crowded around the corpse
like flies in spring around fresh pails of milk.
seeing their fallen king stretched out in death
the Lycians held no longer and fell back.
Achaeans unbuckled from Sarpedon's corpse
his shining arms of bronze.
Patroclus gave the armour to his men
to take back to their ships.
sorrowing Zeus sent Apollo down to the plain
to reclaim the body of his fallen son.
swiftly Apollo descended the foothills of Ida
and took the body to bathe it in the river.
he washed away the dirt and blood
and closed the gaping wounds with tender hands;
perfumed the body, wrapped it in splendid robes;
made clear the skin; and with a comb of pearl
smoothed out the long black locks.
with silken touch he arranged the lustrous limbs
there on the river bank fresh and gleaming,
the lovely Sarpedon relaxed in the arms of the god.
now he looks a handsome youth, a charioteer
of twenty-five or six
calmly resting after a furious race
in a golden chariot with the swiftest horses,
having won the crowning prize and wreath.
his task completed, tearful Apollo
called to Hypnos and to Thanatos,
the brothers Sleep and Death.
he orders them to take the king
back to his mourning kingdom,
Sarpedon back to Lycia.
they returned him to his country
and laid the body at its palace door
before the crying people.
the funeral rites began; the lamentations
and the pouring of libations from sacred cups;
the dancing and the singing;
the burning of the king.
later master stonemasons came
to erect the tomb and commemorative pillar.
19. DIONYSOS AND HIS TRAIN
the sculptor Damon
(best of the rest in the Peloponness)
in priceless Parian chisels and smooths the last
of his great Dionysos and His Train,
a gorgeous unrolled length of bass-relief.
first comes the boy himself, the Fat Imbiber
wobbling out from the marble,
intoxicated glory and great god,
hiccup on legs.
next troop Drink-to-the-Moment with Drink-Some-More
while Drunkenness itself sloshes the satyrs' wine
from an amphora where the ivies twine
among thick clustered grapes.
a lacuna: sleepy Sweetwine on the ground.
follow the twin melodious singers
In-Tune and Lyric Song;
while Lets-Have-Fun romps merrily along
waving aloft a dangerously singeing flame.
last comes I'm-the-Only-Sober-Man
desperately trying not to laugh or spill.
the sculptor Damon
(best of the rest in the Peloponness)
carved these.
carving, he dreamed of the generous fees
about to be bestowed on him and his
by the great beast of Syracuse, the king.
he'll live in style and put aside the chisel;
become a politician - what a thought!
at last he will be treated as he ought,
Something in the Senate and the Square!
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