Waiting

A line from Tu Fu (translated by J.P. Seaton in Bright Moon Perching Bird)

Wind, and dust, but no news comes.
Reminds one of "Waiting for the Barbarians" by Cavafy.

Not because of the wind. Not because of the dust. But because no news comes.

And turn again to Tu Fu, the sixth of the six quatrains from a group of twelve ("Grief Again")
Barbarians. How can there be so many?
Shield and spear: unwilling to put by.
At the village gate, listen to the children
Laugh and shout; play war.
We skip a beat. Where Cavafy cannot carry us over — his speaker is arrested ("And now, what’s going to happen to us without barbarians? / They were, those people, a kind of solution."), Tu Fu brings us close to the integral.

And so for day 1522
12.02.2011