C. P. Cavafy.  Waiting For The Barbarians.

C. P. Cavafy. Waiting For The Barbarians.

Author: Poetry from the Jungle from The Ceylon Press January 18, 2025 Duration: 2:33


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.


There's a particular magic in the poem that almost made it, the one that lingers just outside the canonical spotlight. 101 Exiles from The Ceylon Press is a quiet space dedicated to those verses. Each episode of this Poetry from the Jungle podcast is a curated listening experience, focusing on a single, remarkable work by an acclaimed poet that, for whatever reason, never quite cracked the ubiquitous "top 100" lists. You won't find grand introductions or academic dissections here. Instead, the focus is on the language itself-the rhythm, the imagery, the quiet turn of phrase that deserves a moment of undivided attention. It's for anyone who believes the most resonant lines are sometimes found in the margins, offering a different kind of discovery in the world of verse. This podcast provides a sanctuary for those exiled poems, letting them speak for themselves directly to the listener.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 32

101 Exiles
Podcast Episodes
Rupert Brooke.  The Soilder. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

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I live in you, you live in me;We are two gardens haunted by each other.Sometimes I cannot find you there,There is only the swing creaking, that you have just left,Or your favourite book beside the sundial.
William Blake.  From "Milton". [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:41
And did those feet in ancient time Walk upon England’s mountains green? And was the holy Lamb of God On England’s pleasant pastures seen? And did the Countenance Divine Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusal…
Philip Larkin.  High Windows. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:45
When I see a couple of kidsAnd guess he’s fucking her and she’s Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm, I know this is paradiseEveryone old has dreamed of all their lives— Bonds and gestures pushed to one sideLike an outdat…
C. P. Cavafy.   Desires. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:04
Like beautiful bodies of the dead, who had not grown oldand they shut them with tears, in a magnificent mausoleum,with roses at the head and jasmine at the feet —that is how desires look that have passedwithout fulfillme…
John Betjeman.  How To Get On In Society. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:32
Phone for the fish knives, NormanAs cook is a little unnerved;You kiddies have crumpled the serviettesAnd I must have things daintily served.Are the requisites all in the toilet?The frills round the cutlets can waitTill…
C. P. Cavafy.  Days of 1908. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:26
That was the year when he stayedWithout work, for a living playedCards, or backgammon; or borrowed and never paid.He was offered a place at a smallStationer’s, three pounds a month. It didn’t suit him.It was not decent p…
Hilaire Belloc.  Charles Augustus Fortescue. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:11
The nicest child I ever knewWas Charles Augustus Fortescue.He never lost his cap, or toreHis stockings or his pinafore: In eating Bread he made no Crumbs, He was extremely fond of sums,To which, however, he preferredThe…
Philip Larkin.   Love Songs In Age. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:00
She kept her songs, they kept so little space,The covers pleased her:One bleached from lying in a sunny place,One marked in circles by a vase of water,One mended, when a tidy fit had seized her, And coloured, by her daug…
John Betjeman.  A Subaltern's Love Song. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 3:21
Miss J.Hunter Dunn, Miss J.Hunter Dunn,Furnish'd and burnish'd by Aldershot sun,What strenuous singles we played after tea,We in the tournament - you against me!Love-thirty, love-forty, oh! weakness of joy,The speed of a…