....
Why is everyone so suddenly ill at ease
and confused (just look how solemn their faces are)?
Why are the streets and the squares all at once empty,
as everyone heads for home, lost in their thoughts?

    Because it's night now, and the barbarians haven't shown up.
    And there are others, just back from the borderlands,
    who claim that the barbarians no longer exist.

What in the world will we do without barbarians?
Those people would have been a solution, of sorts.

(C.P. Cavafy, The Canon. Translated from the Greek by Stratis Haviaras, Hermes Publishing, 2004)