BUT WISE MEN PERCEIVE
APPROACHING THINGS
For the gods perceive future events, men what is
happening now, but wise men approaching things.
PHILOSTRATUS, Life of Apollonius of Tyana, viii,7
People know what is happening now.
The gods know things of the future,
the entire and sole possessors of all the lights.
Of the things of the future, wise men perceive
approaching events. At times
during hours of serious meditations
their hearing is disturbed. The mysterious clamor
of approaching events reaches them.
And they listen with reverence. Although outside
on the street, the peoples hear nothing at all.
C.P. Cavafy --
to the people in the street
Thank, you, Genie (we need a genie).
ReplyDeleteIn hand-holding reverence and quiet (muffled) alarm for the people in the street ...the Egyptians... we hold breath and hope for ease...
And Cavafy represented so many things (I had to look him up on wikipedia and had a quick education: Greek, Egyptian, and gay). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C.P._Cavafy
ReplyDeleteFrom the same article: "One of Cavafy's most important works is his 1904 poem "Waiting for the Barbarians". This work, in the person of a disingenuous Byzantine narrator, cynically explores the view that cultivating fear of an invisible external enemy usually serves internal purposes. Parallels have been drawn between the poem's message and the 21st-century war on terror."
"Internal purposes" being very personal, survival-based purposes and impulses, don't you think? How eerily spot-on the parallels are.
ReplyDeleteThanks for this. It resonates for me. Sometimes I think I feel more than see "the mysterious clamor
ReplyDeleteof approaching events," although rarely can I understand what the clamor is about.