Carlisle

Palestine Solidarity Group

About 60 gathered to bang pans with spoons. When I arrived there was just a handful of folk and I stood next to a young mother with her 10 month old baby and we both said how unbearable it is and in an instant both cried and hugged each other. I’m not prone to hugging strangers in the middle of Carlisle but that instantaneous felt sense of universal pain and impotence was palpable. We joined in with the pan bashing but after a while the police told us to stop owing to complaints so we resorted to shouting instead. 

Afterwards I wanted to go back to see what’s happening at the old LYC https://www.blipfoto.com/entry/2734159539505988690 and to reconnect with that creative human spirit. I wish I had been able to visit when he was alive.
It looks as though there is renovation work being done there now.

Then on to have a short walk along Hadrian’s Wall and looked out across the wide horizon searching for the Barbarians …

Waiting for the Barbarians - C.P. Cavafy

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.