What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum? <br /> <br />The barbarians are due here today. <br />Why isn't anything happening in the senate? <br />Why do the senators sit there without legislating? <br /> <br />Because the barbarians are coming today. <br />What laws can the senators make now? <br />Once the barbarians are here, they'll do the legislating. <br />Why did our emperor get up so early, <br />and why is he sitting at the city's main gate <br />on his throne, in state, wearing the crown? <br /> <br />Because the barbarians are coming today <br />and the emperor is waiting to receive their leader. <br />He has even prepared a scroll to give him, <br />replete with titles, with imposing names. <br />Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today <br />wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas? <br />Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts, <br />and rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds? <br />Why are they carrying elegant canes <br />beautifully worked in silver and gold? <br /> <br />Because the barbarians are coming today <br />and things like that dazzle the barbarians. <br />Why don't our distinguished orators come forward as usual <br />to make their speeches, say what they have to say? <br /> <br />Because the barbarians are coming today <br />and they're bored by rhetoric and public speaking. <br />Why this sudden restlessness, this confusion? <br />(How serious people's faces have become.) <br />Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly, <br />everyone going home so lost in thought? <br /> <br />Because night has fallen and the barbarians have not come. <br />And some who have just returned from the border say <br />there are no barbarians any longer. <br />And now, what's going to happen to us without barbarians? <br />They were, those people, a kind of solution.<br /><br />Constantine P. Cavafy<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/waiting-for-the-barbarians/
