Heartland

Rob-comedy genius!

Waiting for the Barbarians The Canon

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.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Translated by Edmund Keeley/Philip Sherrard

(C.P. Cavafy, Collected Poems. Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Edited by George Savidis. Revised Edition. Princeton University Press, 1992)

@Rob...more of your poem please! I'm really liking it...Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

@SINsister....that sounds quite familiar. Please refresh my memory?

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back

That help?

@Maisey...once again...sounds familiar!

msm67 wrote:@SINsister....that sounds quite familiar. Please refresh my memory?

It's Jabberwocky by Lewis Caroll... I used to have the first two lines as my sig for a bit

"Oh frabjous day! Callooh, callay!"

@Boudicca... Thank you! I thought it was that but didn't want to look dumb, in case it wasn't

SINsister wrote:mimsy

she said 'mimsy'

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favour fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice is also great
And would suffice.

Mimsy! ...

Het Leven is een stoel met scheve poten
Mijn innerlijk is echt niet zo stabiel
Vaak val ik zelfs inwendig op mijn kloten
Al heb ik dan geen kloten aan mijn ziel...

Joe Roxy

IZ.

eh. I'll take Milton and Goethe and Homer and Virgil over most of this stuff any day. Might as well toss Coleridge in there as well. I stopped reading Chuckles Bukowski when I realized sleeping in your own vomit was in no way at all heroic.


Now... Who wants some turkey neck?

aye, that bukowski was a premiership p*ss artist.

No, he was an intelligent and sensitive human being - a genius. Quite unlike, say...ooh, i don't know...i'll just pick something at random...you.

His sleeping in his own vomit is much more meaningful than anything you do in a lifetime's worth of existence. i doubt it would help even if you slept in your own vomit. i've done that quite a few times, btw. Last time was midsomer's eve.
Though i must also add that i don't think Bukowski could give a flying f**k about being 'heroic', and neither do i.

Your way is 'yes this and no that' - not in the least enlightened, educational, meaningful, purposeful or interesting.

Oh well what the hell, we try we try we try.

itnAklipse wrote:No, he was an intelligent and sensitive human being - a genius. Quite unlike, say...ooh, i don't know...i'll just pick something at random...you.

markfiend wrote:<moderator_mode>

dei please stop insulting other HLers.

</moderator_mode>

Consider this a final warning. Are you trying to provoke us into banning you?

relax - it wasn't a criticism

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

itnAklipse wrote: He is special you are not I am a unique snowflake you a conformist tool I am authentic and true to myself you take marching orders from the man neener neener neener

Good gravy. What a predictable reaction.

@itnAKLipse...shouldn't you be dancing in a field somewhere?? Why are you so mean when somebody doesn't agree with you? Everyone is entitled to his/her opinion on here, correct??

I came across this one recently, and on the whole, I very much liked :

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pool singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

markfiend wrote:Spike Milligan FTW

String
Is a very important thing.
Rope is thicker
But string is quicker.

Not as good as.

"in the ning nang nong,
where the cows go bong
& the monkeys all say boo.
in the nong nang ning,
where the trees go biing
& the teapots jibber jabber joo"

Think that's right...

On the nong ning nang all the mice go clang
And you just can't catch them when they do


God, I memorised that when I was younger

itnAklipse wrote:No, he was an intelligent and sensitive human being - a genius. Quite unlike, say...ooh, i don't know...i'll just pick something at random...you.

His sleeping in his own vomit is much more meaningful than anything you do in a lifetime's worth of existence. i doubt it would help even if you slept in your own vomit. i've done that quite a few times, btw. Last time was midsomer's eve.
Though i must also add that i don't think Bukowski could give a flying f**k about being 'heroic', and neither do i.

Your way is 'yes this and no that' - not in the least enlightened, educational, meaningful, purposeful or interesting.

Oh well what the hell, we try we try we try.

I'm prety certain you've never slept in my vomit, but you win one grossness award for that!