Someone once said that "poetry is the best defense against prose." And at the beginning of a year when we will hear, read, and produce more prose than is probably good for us, I thought we should begin with a poem. The Greek poet C.F. Cavafy (1863-1933) published a fairly large body of work, but the only poem of his that I know is Waiting for the Barbarians (1904). So, with the a new Congressional year upon us, and with news of acts of terror and mayhem across the world in mind, I will reproduce here in full:
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.
In Cavafy's poem the barbarians never do come, leaving the politicos with nothing to do and no one to blame.
But in our case the barbarians have come, and they have been very, very busy. And this week has been marked by a series of particularly barbarous public acts. For me, the most difficult image to come to grips with was of the little 10-year old Nigerian girl, strapped up to an explosive device and sent by the men of Boko Haram into a local marketplace. There they detonated the bomb by remote control, killing her and 19 others. And in this first half of the first month of the new year, there have already been too many stories like this. I feel fear and despair when I hear them. Worse still, I feel my heart slowly turning to stone.
Fear and despair and hard-heartedness are, of course, the barbarians' stock-in-trade. And in some sense they have already won: we are afraid so we don't travel and we put bigger locks on our doors, we despair so we give up on peacemaking, our hearts are hardened so we torture and we build walls between ourselves and The Other and we buy lots and lots and lots of guns.
But it is the beginning of a new year. And there is still something about the beginning of the new year that primes us for fresh starts and a future of possibilities that we intend to grasp with both hands. And we are deeply cheered, deeply moved, by the sight of millions of people filling the streets of Paris with placards: Je suis Charlie, Je suis, Ahmed, Je suis Police.
We are cheered by the growing trend in Pakistan, where for the first time young people are willing to post calls for the end of Taliban and, even in the face of the threat of reprisal, are brave enough to give their names and show their faces on social media. We are cheered by stories of medical personnel from the West traveling to West Africa to treat the victims of ebola at great personal risk. We are are cheered by acts of courage, we are cheered by visions of hope, we are cheered by signs of faith in the future.
Yes, fear and despair and hard-heartedness are the stock-in-trade of the barbarians. But they are also, sadly, the storck-in-trade of the merchants, the sellers of bombs and guns and locks and walls. So I imagine that what used to be called the 'military-industrial complex' are intensly worried about these outbreaks of hope. I imagine they are asking, like the people in the Cavafy poem, "what's going to happen to us without the barbarians?" It is a hard combination to fight, the combination of those who incite our fear and those who profit from our fear. These days, it's hard to know which sort of barbarian is the more dangerous.
But it is the beginning of a new year. And we are primed to make a fresh start. But we know today, when the barbarians have indeed come, that the hardest New Year's Resolution we may ever have to make is a commitment to hope.
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 todayand 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.
In Cavafy's poem the barbarians never do come, leaving the politicos with nothing to do and no one to blame.
But in our case the barbarians have come, and they have been very, very busy. And this week has been marked by a series of particularly barbarous public acts. For me, the most difficult image to come to grips with was of the little 10-year old Nigerian girl, strapped up to an explosive device and sent by the men of Boko Haram into a local marketplace. There they detonated the bomb by remote control, killing her and 19 others. And in this first half of the first month of the new year, there have already been too many stories like this. I feel fear and despair when I hear them. Worse still, I feel my heart slowly turning to stone.
Fear and despair and hard-heartedness are, of course, the barbarians' stock-in-trade. And in some sense they have already won: we are afraid so we don't travel and we put bigger locks on our doors, we despair so we give up on peacemaking, our hearts are hardened so we torture and we build walls between ourselves and The Other and we buy lots and lots and lots of guns.
But it is the beginning of a new year. And there is still something about the beginning of the new year that primes us for fresh starts and a future of possibilities that we intend to grasp with both hands. And we are deeply cheered, deeply moved, by the sight of millions of people filling the streets of Paris with placards: Je suis Charlie, Je suis, Ahmed, Je suis Police.
We are cheered by the growing trend in Pakistan, where for the first time young people are willing to post calls for the end of Taliban and, even in the face of the threat of reprisal, are brave enough to give their names and show their faces on social media. We are cheered by stories of medical personnel from the West traveling to West Africa to treat the victims of ebola at great personal risk. We are are cheered by acts of courage, we are cheered by visions of hope, we are cheered by signs of faith in the future.Yes, fear and despair and hard-heartedness are the stock-in-trade of the barbarians. But they are also, sadly, the storck-in-trade of the merchants, the sellers of bombs and guns and locks and walls. So I imagine that what used to be called the 'military-industrial complex' are intensly worried about these outbreaks of hope. I imagine they are asking, like the people in the Cavafy poem, "what's going to happen to us without the barbarians?" It is a hard combination to fight, the combination of those who incite our fear and those who profit from our fear. These days, it's hard to know which sort of barbarian is the more dangerous.
But it is the beginning of a new year. And we are primed to make a fresh start. But we know today, when the barbarians have indeed come, that the hardest New Year's Resolution we may ever have to make is a commitment to hope.
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