Shout at the Walled

 

Lord

Today, I’m carrying a spare throat to the farm:

not a hoe, not a sickle,

with brute faith I guard my loins

and trudge to the point where

 

I set up my camp

 

To shout down the world

The world, as you know, is the pump-price-of-fuel

 

Nkkhm: a bird emerges from a hole,

like car from an underground garage,

then flees

O no – it’s a cricket!

Kruuu, a frog comes running, scared stiff

Like a concubine’s chewing’ stick

Then a redneck

All these just because I cleared my throat!

So what’s going to give when I start my shout?

 

I blow a shout through my ram horn

A shout of rugged airs. But it doesn’t even rumple the calico

Of the bouncers at the planets’ politburo.

 

I climb mount Armstrong, Louis Armstrong

And shape my cheeks like his mini-universe

and blow, blow, blow

But every shout, every decibel of outrage

Only manages to send the world to a higher orbit

The world, as you know, is the pump-price-of-fuel

 

Far away it spins

Beyond the reach of tear gas-and-cloud

Beyond the reach of delinquent stars splintered from the Big Bang

Beyond the reach of the spin doctors, paid

Handsomely, very handsomely

To say, very nicely,

In scented sentences

with nicotined lips

That the world is doing just fine

The world, as you know, is the pump-price-of-fuel

 

What a fatal love for their urbane airs.

Their elaborate gesticulations surely

Have more to do with the karat content of their cufflinks

Than the other point they want us to see:

How little it matters if, they

Started off as dieticians and ended up morticians

– it’s the same number of syllables!

 

That’s even before they switch on their charm

Backed by a history of histograms

And declare, with the assurance of the rarity of their perfumes

That the world is doing just fine

That many would look back, soon

And say, from marble graveyards

That this was the economist’s finest hour.