The Threat

Why are the barbarians always at the gates?
They’re always there, you’ll never escape
Maybe they think they’re waiting for a date
Maybe they want to immigrate
In any case, they sit and wait
Hoping we won’t retaliate
It’s really a perpetual state
Of quietly waiting for things to mutate.

We don’t really like them sitting there
They’re ugly, they have disheveled hair
They’re always poorer than we are
And most of all, we really don’t care
They seem to want the things we have
To be like us is what they crave
And though we aren’t so very brave
The little we have we’re determined to save.

When did they first start sitting there?
Was it back when we had the first empires
Those Egyptian and Sumerian leaders
Did they have to deal with foreign squatters
Trying to get a piece of the action
Representing a kind of competition
To a desire for domination
From an originating dominion.

Of course, “barbarians” depend on perspective
It’s really just a form of invective
Are we at their gates or are they at ours
Are we terrorists or just neighbours
What is the basis for this conflict
Are our motives just naturally suspect
Who is the derelict
Who has the right to judge and inspect.

One point that does seem clear in the end
The barbarians have a tendency to win
Once we recognize their aim
It’s hard to get them to go away again
The Romans kept on joining them
The Chinese lost to Genghis Khan
The Jews are in incessant pain
The whole world’s barbarians to them.

Another point that comes to light
We are responsible for our plight
When we ourselves align with right
Barbarians are put to flight
Goodness is the world’s delight
It seems to attract force and might
We do not fear the force of night
With power and majesty in sight.

To Spain’s Grandees the Dutch Revolt
Seemed a threat, a brash insult
Superior culture, industrial might
Meant nothing, power was their right
And only a decades long fight
Convinced them they had no divine right
To crush all those who opposed with force
The Dons sacred, Catholic course.

And then when England held grand sway
It was the Dutch financed America’s way
To seek her independency
From a total world hegemony
And weren’t they barbaric dogs to they
Who sought total supremacy
Over all the world’s entirety
Who sought always to have their way.

So when we see barbarians at our door
Remember what they have in store
We may think that we know more
But many’s the time we’ve been wrong before
There’s no one who’s right all the time
They enemy’s views may be righter than mine
And anyone who’s studied history
Knows the course of progress’ a mystery.




© Copyright Jerome Raymond Kraus 2005