When we got back to the island
With its pinched and brown faces
We felt so ill at ease
We scratched, kept our eyes low and we quarrelled
By day the flies came and by night the mosquitoes
As angry as I and I became dazed
The light was so hard and the liquor was hazy
Why we ever came back here man I won't never know
What does quarantine mean when you can't get home?
And why do I ask you when I know that you do not know?

Then in May the news came and we were on our own

My friends left on the sly
Their boat rocked slow and lazy
While me and the rent dreamt of getting paid
But when we left we weren't feeling all that bad
We parted company on a beach where it rolled
All silver and blonde like the lid of an eye
That won't ever close rested over waters this tireless

And if the sun is a demon, let a demon be white
Let the days sink like it's footprints under needles of light

In the bars on the island
Men have hands like mine
And stomachs about as dead as fishes eyes
On the streets all the women hide behind their fly screens
You can't make out their faces
And they know you can't see
There's a graveyard that's waiting just outside of time
And a church house to flesh out the skeleton of your mind
The church walls breed shadows where the children bare feet
Watch the vines spill from everywhere out into the heat
All knuckled and gnarled like a bad memory
With their tropical flowers like a shriek in your ear
Like her shrieks in your ear
This steeple of wood
Above which the jungle looms patient
We're fucked now
And we're fucked for keeps

Oh Lord grant me one more deciduous season
Then grant me a winter like so many tears