Use Me While You Can

There's a black and white crow on the back of a two-toned sheep in a field of broken yellow stalks below looming cliffs. High above the plains little grey houses blend with giant jagged boulders and pale weathered stumps. Life in the ghost of the bush. Wind whips the acacias and strange forked palms That cluster around the water hole Suddenly, out of the blowing sand A milk-white camel appears. Turbaned rider, blue robe billowing, bounces with the shambling trot; wears a sword and a rifle on his back, and hanging from his neck, a transistor radio... You blink and like ghosts, they're gone Under the wan disc of sand-masked sun A woman grins - spits expertly Into the path of a struggling black beetle Six feet away Hoists her water bucket onto her head And strides off up the trail... Sun a steel ball glowing Behind endless blowing sand Sun a steel ball glowing Dust of fallen empires slowly flowing through my hands Use me while you can Pearl held in black fingers Is the moon behind dry trees Pearl held in black fingers Bird inside the rib cage is beating to be free Use me while you can I've had breakfast in New Orleans Dinner in Timbuktu I've lived as a stranger in my own house, too Dark hand waves in lamplight Cowrie shell patterns change And nothing will be the same again Bullet in a sandstorm Looking for a place to land Bullet in a sandstorm Full heart beats an empty one In the deck they dealt to man Use me while you can