What are we waiting for,
assembled in the forum?
Why isn’t anything happening
in the senate?
Why do the senators sit there without legislating?
Because the barbarians are coming today.
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?
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?
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.
CAVAFY
Não, os bárbaros não vieram formados, em legiões, acometer as muralhas de Roma e acampar no Forum.
Não. Não foi assim.
Chegaram de todo o lado, aos magotes, do norte e do sul, do leste e do oeste, a coberto do sentimentalismo estridente de um Império já incapaz de impôr a ordem nas fronteiras longínquas, a única forma eficaz de defender as fronteiras próximas.
Alguns, poucos, os que perceberam, avisaram, lutaram contra, foram tratados de pusilâmines e de imbecis, votados ao desprezo da multidão putativamente "generosa" e "bem pensante". De repente a sharia e outros costumes bárbaros dominaram o Império. As raizes gregas, latinas e judaico - cristãs foram arrancadas. E uma longa noite caiu sobre a velha Europa. Feliz tu, Cavafy, último dos grandes poetas gregos, porque não vais assistir a isto.
