Momus Empty Paris
I am teacher who works on a farm
Immunity barcode tattooed on my arm
But the children must eat, education can wait
I coax up the carrots til quarter to eight
And if I don't farm then nobody eats
And if nobody eats we're in pain
What if someone declared a black death but nobody came?
And the Ibis hotel is a hospital now
The conference centre's a morgue
The city's so quiet, I can't get used to it
The police have turned into the Borg
Saw a lonely flaneur with a drone overhead
With a thin metal voice that shrieked out as it said:
“You have the choice to be thrown in a cell or go home”
Empty Paris, empty Berlin
Empty London, New York, empty Dublin
Empty Lagos, Johannesburg, Moscow, LA
Empty Adelaide, empty Belgrade
And I dig on the farm, this tattoo on my arm
Proving I've come through the plague
And when this squeeze is over and we all recover
Perhaps we will drink lemonade
I had a partner but she's disappeared
And I'm not used to living alone
Well the hard work all starts when the loneliness hurts
And sometimes I wish we'd both gone
And I'm scared of the government, scared of the Russians
And scared of these criminal pricks
When I head out to work at a quarter to five
They all watch for signs that I'm sick
Where once there was motion now there's just stubbornness
Where once was health we're just ill
Feral rats have invaded the Quai de la Monnaie
Foxes took over Café Kitsune
In the Palais Royale it's now head-high with weeds
Food rots in the Carrousel du Louvre
In Ikea I see only chaos and fear
A ghost town where nobody moves
Empty Paris, empty Berlin
Empty London, New York, empty Dublin
Empty Lagos, Johannesburg, Moscow, LA
Empty Adelaide, empty Belgrade
And I dig on the farm, this tattoo on my arm
Proving I've come through the plague
When this squeeze is over and we all recover
Perhaps I will drink lemonade