In this city of chaos not a single tree blooms;
in boundless harshness everything here seems dead.
Not a drop of water exists,
grey earth births only unyielding stone.
On every face invisible fear is etched,
and when sacred words emerge from the brain's core
suddenly syllables become martyrs' monuments of the heart.
But wait, I too love this very earth...
yet here I lie buried face-down, silent and mute,
daily inscribing on my back time's merciless signature,
slowly eroding under the weight of hours.
Though knowing fluent truth to be lies
I calmly pocket countless wrappers of falsehood.
Yet like a village glimpsed suddenly from a moving train
knowing ourselves to be relatively still
we now deceive life itself.
And in this era's festering wound-chest
opportunists fatten daily—
affection, love, hatred in this parched city of anarchy.