And now, what’s going to happen to us without barbarians? They were, those people, a kind of solution. - Konstantinos P. Cavafy

Done Amid fear and suspicion,
with startled minds and frightened eyes,
we pine and scheme over what steps to take
to avoid the certain
danger that threatens us so horribly.
Yet we are wrong. This was not the danger in store;
the portents were false
(or we never heard them, or failed to construe them properly).
It’s some other disaster, precipitous, violent,
one we hadn’t imagined,
that suddenly takes us unawares, and –
there’s no time now – overcomes us.

SETI SE, TELO...

Telo, seti se ne samo koliko si bilo voljeno,
ne jedino kreveta na kojima si ležalo,
nego i onih želja, koja su zbog tebe
iskrile u onim jasnim očima
i drhtale u glasu – a neka ih je
slučajna prepreka osujetila.
Sada, kad je sve to već u prošlosti,
izgleda skoro kao da si se onim
željama i predavalo – kako su iskrile,
seti se, u očima što su te gledale:
kako su drhtale u glasu zbog tebe, seti se, telo.

...I sit and gaze like this for a long time,
recovering through art from the effort of creating it.