Wednesday, October 29, 2003

Short Ride in a Fast Poem

Two songs about the same person

I return to old themes and images,
the sounds of blackness and of rainy nights
when dreams set madness back
and all the air seems lit with misery.
And in this night, we two leave the crowd
and walk the broken roads
to a bright lighted café where all men smile
and talk happily about their countries.

In this happy, stark reminder, we stay,
conspirators, picked up by agencies
and spat out laughing into rain and light.

The echoed whistles of the ships
call to their crews and strange, dark overseers.
A captain leans against the door, white smile
against the sooty face of engineers behind him,
while we stand by and understand his weird language,
his pleas to crewmen for their boarding.

We are the city crew, the pilots of this dockland
to its end, the phonemes of desire,
in empty streets and customs zones.
Our pens betray our presence here,
with cleaner clothes and faces,
as we take tea with sailors.
We are observers, mass observers,
brought back from nineteen-thirty-four,
to note for other travellers, the end of race,
the death of history.

The music fades, an inverse of the dawn,
one over sunrise, long division synchronised
with gentle calls to arms and revolution,
coded, ciphered in the news and gossip,
an empty call for things to change.
Wind lacerates, a word stolen from the Bible,
its meaning lost on powerful men.

Recorded live in twenty minutes and doesn't it show?

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