Waiting for the Barbarians
by Willis Barnstone
And now what will we do without the barbarians? — C.P.Cavafy
The emperor has no brains. His ministers, mentors
and minions know the condition of our leader
and administrate his mind with blatant tact,
and no one, not even his cowed opponents, breaks
the hypocritical code. The aura of silence about
the emperor’s mind is mandated by expediency.
No child calls out: The emperor has no brains!
And we seem lost. Maybe the word hypocrisy
is severe to type a man who stumbled to his throne
on an orange, and fear makes him popular.
As regional crown prince he broke a record
for executing hooligans, each time blessing God
for his harsh mercy.The popular fears stay on.
We’re united. Would you be profiled traitor?
The emperor depends on the holy barbarians
who march in multitudes, who tremble the streets
down to their tar intestines. These ancient furies
tear their hair out and rip bras and blouses
from their bodies. Our leader prays softly at barbaric
hoots. They cry Idiot They shriek Face of Satan!
Our monarch is pleased their wicked ways are loud.
Our people love a dumb emperor. He’s one of us
a common man with vices who likes a pistol,
a guy talking back to barbarians. He will bomb them
before they smash us. He smiles and looks frightened
yet it’s sweet to be an emperor and host premiers,
athletes and heroes, and not live in a sewer
but in a great white house circled by big cannons.
There is a melancholy in our land. And bad news.
Russians claim barbarians live only in the Caucuses
or have facelifts and own slot machine parlors.
Are there no wild beasts in a desert once Eden?
Our empoeror’s men have gone underground
in panic but send up blueprints to create
a goat-horned dragon roaring over the ocean.
Our mindless caesar lies on the ground and weeps.
it is sad to live under a subnormal emperor.
We are tanking and he bumps along in his golf cart.
The barbarians were a solution. Another winter.
What can we do? We’re obedient as Mongol ponies.
The emperor’s minions haunt an underground city
run secret courts and e-mail God for our next step.
We are waiting for the barbarians.Our emperor
has memorized his speech. He has no brains
yet our daughter comes home from school, saying:
Our emperor seems crudely smart and wicked.
Maybe our barbarians will not blow up the world
or fling us all in prison. The sad one smiles.
There is a terrible melancholy in our land.
…………….
(from Wikipedia) The original poem, “Waiting for the Barbarians” (of which this poem by Barnstone is a take-off) is a poem by a Greek, Constantine P. Cavafy, written in November 1898 and printed around December 1904, as a private pamphlet. Cavafy’s poem falls under the umbrella of historical poems Cavafy, a Classicist, created in his anthology. Cavafy’s poem describes a city-state in decline, (modeled after Alexandria?) whose population and legislators are waiting for the arrival of the ‘Barbarians’. When night falls, the barbarians have not arrived. Cavafy’s poem ends:’What is to become of us without Barbarians? Those people were a solution of a sort.’
This poem by Willis Barnstone, by the same title, is Barnstone’s version of Cavafy’s poem. Willis’s poem was written over a hundred years later, about 15 years ago. (I can’t find a date for it.)
When we read Barnstone’s poem, we automatically cast Trump as the emperor, but for me the brainless emperor riding around in a golf cart is an archetype constellated by every president who has presided over our travesty of a democracy that I can think of. When we read this poem we might also cast the January 6 insurrectionists of the Capital as the barbarians, but there is a darker implication.The barbarians are the loud, violent ones who act out brainlessly, but for me the most disturbing line is in the second to last stanza:
The emperor’s minions haunt an underground city
run secret courts and e-mail God for our next step.
. . . Not their next step . . . “our” next step.
Let’s stop waiting for the barbarians to displace our brokenness with a “solution of a sort”. I still believe we can do better than that.
Gary Lindorff - Nine Waves 