Tell me the meaning of architecture
Tell me the meaning of justice
Explain it in a way
That even a bird could understand
Don’t talk of blood
Blood understands very little
Blood is dumb and functional
And cannot fly by itself
Like thoughts in the brain
We live in buildings
And our thoughts live in agony
Like snakes stabbed by knives
Mr Justice of the Peace
How many thoughts have you corralled today?
And Mr Thought Control
How much memory have you blotted out?
I’m building a house of anger
Here in your land
Have you enough flames
To burn it down?
Blood does not understand fire
But it has a ghost that cries
And the cries neve fade away
You may write history
With the ink of death
But the sun and the wind
Clean it and preserve it
As the truth between us
And the truth between us
Strips us bare of lies
In the court of pity
Where we go to be pitied
And pity is sold like lard
To wretchedness and woe
In the court of pity
Where we go to be pitied
And pity has a famine
Where we die of thirst
In the court of mercy
Where we go for mercy
And mercy drips through a wall
For the beggars of mankind
In the court of mercy
Where we go for mercy
And mercy is a telegram
Of a few words
There are millions like us
Alive and dead
We cover the benches
Like stinking rats
And once in a lifetime
And we are we are given a lottery ticket
We who are tied over a stone
Worn down by the wind
And our judges all line up
To sing halleluiahs
Then they are dispersed
Into the sweetly singing wind
Every good judge
Is buried in sand
He trudges through the sand
He sits down on sand
His judgement
Is like sand
His courtroom
Is like sand
Every good judge
Every good judge
You may hear
Of a good judge
Trudging through the sand
From one sand hill to another
With vultures above his head
Without any clothes
Wandering through the sand of life
Every good judge
Every good judge
And so he cries out
And his cries become clouds
And the clouds travel across the land
And the clouds rain down
On a dry and thirsty people
In need of a good judge
In need of a good judge
Notes
I watched a film called Sergio about a United Nations diplomat Sérgio Vieira de Mello who helped Timor to become independent of Malaysia. In one scene he talks to a lady in a basket weaving workshop and askes her what she wants. The last verse is an adaptation of her very poetic reply. It seems for some people that ideas expressed through poetry are all they have of their former lives and freedoms.
