Mountain Beyond

Wayworn if you are not,

Let us travel to the mountain beyond Jerusalem

Where there are no guns, no lynchers or hangmen

Who cause misery and mayhem.

Let us go to the mountain beyond Jerusalem

Where wild fruits burgeon all year round,

You do not need to hoard or own.

Blessed enough are the boughs,

Doves, sparrows, gyrfalcons, hawks ands crows

Nest on the same branch,

and sit on each others eggs to hatch.

There is an eternal light,

No need to moil to rig out oil

Only to chock the earth

And its beauty spoiled,

While you still abode in a tenebrous toque

smeared with soil.

Let us go to the mountain beyond the great Western Plains

Where the riverbed is not macadamise

With bones of old tribes long gone and dead

Where no child cries, slain at the dolmens and altars

Of religious rivals.

Come!Let us trek beyond Jerusalem to Cockaigne

Where people do not complain

Of fraudulent election campaigns.

If only you tackle the beast in you

And keep him forever arraigned.

© Haileselassie Girmay

13/08/2002