WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS
by C.P. Cavafy (translated by Keeley & Sherrard)


What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?

      The barbarians are due here today.

Why isn’t anything going on in the senate?
Why are the senators sitting there without legislating?

      Because the barbarians are coming today.
      What’s the point of senators making laws now?
      Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating.

Why did our emperor get up so early,
and why is he sitting enthroned at the city’s main gate,
in state, wearing the crown?

      Because the barbarians are coming today
      and the emperor’s waiting to receive their leader.
      He’s even got a scroll to give him,
      loaded 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,
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 turn up 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 bewilderment, this confusion?
(How serious people’s faces have become.)
Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
everyone going home lost in thought?

      Because night has fallen and the barbarians haven't come.
      And some of our men just in from the border say
      there are no barbarians any longer.

Now what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?
Those people were a kind of solution.

favor of alexander balas - c.p. cavafy

Favor of Alexander Balas
by C.P. Cavafy (tr. Dalven)

O, I am not upset that a wheel of my chariot
is broken, and I have lost a foolish victory.
I will spend the night with fine wines
and amid lovely roses. Antioch belongs to me.
I am the young man most glorified.
I am Balas's weakness, his adored one.
Tomorrow, you'll see, they'll say that the contest was unfair.
(But if I were coarse, and had ordered it in secret --
the flatters would have voted first prize even to my
crippled chariot.)

infidelity - c.p. cavafy

Infidelity
by C.P. Cavafy (tr. Dalven)

At the nuptial banquet of Thetis and Peleus
Apollo rose from the sumptuous marriage
table, and gave the newlyweds his divine blessing
for the offspring that would be born of their union.
He siad, "No sickness shall ever touch him and he
shall have a long, long life." -- When he spoke these words
Thetis rejoiced beyond measure, for the words
of Apollo who knew all about prophecies
seemed a guarantee for the life of her son.
And through the years when Achilles was growing up
and his fine looks were the glory of Thessaly,
Thetis remembered the words of the god.
But one day old men arrived with news
and they told of the slaying of Achilles at Troy.
And Thetis tore off her purple garments,
and she kept on tearing off and casting upon
the ground her bracelets and rings.
And in her lamentation she recalled the past;
and she asked what the wise Apollo was doing,
where was the poet wandering who speaks
so divinely at feasts, where was the prophet roaming
when they were slaying her son in the prime of his youth.
And the old men answered her that Apollo
himself had gone down to Troy,
and with the Trojans he had slain Achilles.

monotony - c.p. cavafy

Monotony
C.P. Cavafy (tr. Dalven)

One monotonous day follows another
identical monotony. The same things
will happen, they will happen again --
the same moments find us and leave us.

A month passes and ushers in another month.
One can easily guess the coming events;
they are those tedious ones of yesterday.
And the morrow ends by not resembling a morrow.

it must have been the spirits - c.p. cavafy

It Must Have Been The Spirits 
by C.P. Cavafy (tr. Daniel Mendelsohn)

It must have been the spirits that I drank last night,
it must have been that I was drowsing, I'd been tired all day long.

The black wooden column vanished before me,
with the ancient head; and the dining-room door,
and the armchair, the red one; and the little settee.
In their place came a street in Marseille.
And freed now, unabashed, my soul
appeared there once again and moved about,
along with the form of a sensitive, pleasure-bent youth--
the dissolute youth:  that too must be said.

It must have been the spirits that I drank last night,
it mast have been that I was drowsing, I'd been tired all day long.

My soul was released; the poor thing, it's
always constrained by the weight of the years.

My soul was released and it showed me
a sympathique street in Marseille,
with the form of the happy, dissolute youth
who never felt ashamed, not he, certainly.

i brought to art - c.p. cavafy

I Brought To Art
by C.P. Cavafy (tr. Rae Dalven)

I sit and meditate.     I brought to art

desires and feelings--     some things half seen,

faces or lines;     some indistinct memories

of unfulfilled loves.     Let me rely on her.

She knows how to fashion     a Figure of Beauty;

almost imperceptibly     rounding out life,

combining impressions,     combining the days.