For keeps, the mountain is caught
in the stranglehold of the snake
and the city too, the whole country

Along the sea, its tail lashes
with thunders, craters of hellfire
into the earth, it roars and howls

fears of death into our breath at night
it shatters our grasshopper heads
on the cobblestones, each and every one

It doesn't like me, it only eats
the land on which I live, it encloses
and stuns me like a cockroach
that keeps sliding back in the bottle

and cannot escape from dreams
of lost freedom and the villages
wiped away and smoothed
by its long snake stomach

There is no land left for the dead
They are buried under our beds
Tell me, how can I sleep like this
waiting for a miracle
waiting for death?