LAMENTATIONS

by David Eide

The barbaric sweeps through the disenchanted city. It makes the poet hungry and he takes himself down to the restaurant of excellent smells. It has gained a reputation; it's always busy, patronized by the literary and professionals who, later, skulk the streets like lost lambs without their mothers.

All during the meal he berates himself for getting caught up in the silly question of barbarism and civilization. I love my brothers. I can only do what gives me more resources, more happiness. That which would take it away is barbaric.

The Barbarian, a perfect representative of an injustice, converts his useful energy into the blind desire to destroy anything that suggests otherness. The poet, too, destroys otherness and recognizes the barbarian within himself but, at a crucial moment, understands that the barbarian aspires to the higher states of being. He wills himself in that direction. "What is to stop me?" he asks in perfect innocence. "The bad conscience of mothers who love barbarians?" He laughs. We are all of a part; a whole and fight among the incompleteness that surely will disappear one day.

Ah, a moment of vertigo at the separation between the barbarian and his aspirations.