Empty Paris - Momus

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