Million Dead Medicine
The day will come at a redrawing of the boundaries
when Pilsudski will rear his head in Iberia,
Because he's been moving west for centuries,
Creeping every time that Mazzini turns in his grave.
And I have watched his drift with sallow skin
and with longing for the western coasts where he would
lay his head and get well.
For he has caught a disease that makes him bleed when
breathing.
They sent him south for the cure to the shores of the
Starnbergersee.
So the day will come when I pack my things and move west
into the setting sun,
Because my strength has failed,
I am fading.
So will you till my fields and will you tend my sheep
until I get back,
Because I will be coming home,
My health restored.
And if Josef can lose himself in the dark of the
continent
then surely there must be a way that I can cough up
the last of the continent and lose myself.
Nineteenth Century science cannot soother my chest.
Staggering through Europe,
I keep on heading west.
My medicine is a setting sun.
