Blues for Maalouf 2

so many empty chairs
when to many a stone suffices

how much to lose

on the ascent

the tumbling hoof

stones once more
falling on the innocent

i climb with you
we are here by chance
we are visitors
we are accidents
which somehow do not happen
standing still
in a future moment

i feel like kicking all the chairs down
all the stones into the blue air
punching the living daylights out of
the goon who sprayed his weed killer
on once resplendent orchids

the victory of arrogance never ceases
his will to greater
and the dying bees
and the dying snakes
in the midnight moon the lame fox
preys on the mutant mouse

the earth cries from its open wound
and we are in there
our anger is only the will to continue
is that another arrogance

wouldn't it be best to push it all
down the burning slope
a fine apocalypse finally

the bees and poetry and all our magnificent children

sometimes smiling is impossible in this south
yet the sun effaces even idiots
the Mediterranean takes the lonely coke bottle to hell
and leaves it there with my bad temper

it will rain your music on this unknown city
on this my anger

i call it blues
i take so many supreme liberties
none greater than this writing itself
which stutters
which strides
which your trumpet soothes
serenading the bees as they die
for an extra ounce of meat
for an extra litre of oil
for some meagre profit
it is always for profit
the waters ineluctably polluted
the people slowly surely
poisoned and cured by the same hand

the taxi driver will risk his and your life
to take you to where you needn't go
to smoke a cigarette under a millenary olive tree at midnight

what does it matter
don't forget your malt whisky and hashish
your raw fennel munchies

hugging the most beautiful girl in the world
you will look over the valleys
signs
still to be written
in music

the bus will take you at dawn
through the pine woods and the groves

the homeless gathering kindling
in the waterless plains

you have to take your sound with you my brother
you cannot stop at every village
you are always already leaving
you must leave your tears in your eyes

one or two heavy suitcases
to cross the historical water
the ethnic divide
our chance is to be born into ignorance
the walls will no longer come down
they will rise again the same evening
in these lands of the deaf and the blind
in these lands of suffocating beauty

if we have enemies
even they are as unknown as us

they are the common murderers of beauty
bee killers and snake assassins

man cannot rid himself of the organ which kills

the ladies in headscarves know that
as they carry the grains to market
they sit on carpets
they talk in silent signs

the men smoke

dogs bark

you play your trumpet in silence

dawn your sister on a hill top

echoes

with stripes of silver and blue