On waiting for barbarians; meditation on three poems by C. P. Cavafy

The semester begins today. I will teach four regular classes this term--for the first time I will teach in a regular semester. The past week or so I have been restless. Concentration and preparation have been either difficult or impossible to come by. Instead of working diligently (even with rests) to prepare for what will be a challenging term, I have been waiting for the barbarians.

Why isn’t anything happening in the senate?
Why do the senators sit there without legislating?

            Because the barbarians are coming today.
            What laws can the senators make now?
            Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating.

I've been waiting for something to happen, something external. Then, when that something happens, I will have to respond to that, so I really ought to save my time, energy, and attention for that. Waiting is clearly the prudent choice.

Why this sudden restlessness, this confusion?
(How serious people’s faces have become.)
Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
everyone going home so lost in thought?

            Because night has fallen and the barbarians have not come.
            And some who have just returned from the border say
            there are no barbarians any longer.
 
And now, what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?
They were, those people, a kind of solution. 

This waiting has been itself a kind of response, a way of shaping the present and the future. Why do I forget this? Why am I waiting for barbarians when I could become an Antony?

As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
as is right for you who proved worthy of this kind of city,
go firmly to the window
and listen with deep emotion, but not
with the whining, the pleas of a coward;
listen—your final delectation—to the voices,
to the exquisite music of that strange procession,
and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing.

One does not prove oneself worthy of, say, an Alexandria, or even, especially, of an Ithaka, by waiting anxiously for barbarians who may never arrive.  

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

 With Ithaka on my mind and Alexandria in my heart, what can barbarians do to me or for me?