We were certain they would come.
We broke the idols of those who
might have stood against them, one by one.
We waited in the capital to welcome them
with goblets brimming with children’s blood.
We removed our clothes to put on barks
set fire to monuments,
propitiated fire for the sacrifices to come ,
changed the names of the royal streets.
Afraid our libraries might provoke them
we razed them to the ground, letting
only the palm leaves inscribed with the mantras
of black magic to survive.
But we did not even know when they came.
For, they had come up, holding aloft
our own idols, saluting our flag,
dressed like we used to be,
carrying our law-books, chanting our slogans,
speaking our tongue, piously touching
the stone-steps of the royal assembly.
Only when they began to poison our wells,
rob our kids of their food and
shoot people down accusing them of thinking
did we realise they had ever been
amidst us, within us. Now we
look askance at one another and wonder,
‘Are you the barbarian? Are you?’
No answer. We only see the fire spreading
filling our future with smoke and our
language turning into that of death.
Now we wait for our saviour at the city square,
as if it were someone else.
[Remembering C.P. Cavafy’s famous poem, ‘Waiting for the Barbarians’.]
(K. Satchidanandan, poet, art critic, essayist and public intellectual, writes in both English and Malayalam. Courtesy: The Beacon. The Beacon is a web-based only feature magazine of writing and reading (long-form essays, fiction and poetry) that believes in confluences more than in consensus.)
