Goods

From mountain high
to valley deep.
Have you any
I may keep?

Here I wander
far from home.
Have you any
I may own?

Fickle lover,
you come and go.
You warm me up,
then leave me cold.

I used to seek
your warm embrace.
Such teasing wearied
from the chase.

The effort expended:
unreturned.
Bones exhausted.
Lungs thus burned.

And what is it
that I may show?
To take along
when I must go?

I'm told: acquire
mansions high.
What coin may purchase
a piece of sky?

I'm told: so purchase
things of dust.
But their very makeup
I do not trust.

Cars and spouses.
Houses!
Houses!
Nimble fingers
to undo the
blouses.

Crying!  Crying!
Hefty sighing.
"Comfort!  Comfort!"
I'm trying...
trying...

From flower to flower.
Leave... return.
Another lover
has left me spurned.

And the dirt, I'm forced,
to give it back.
So what's the point
in chasing that?

The taste of honey,
it is not sweet.
Have you any
I may keep?

Renters here
in borrowed homes.
On borrowed time,
and borrowed bones.

And things on loan
we must give back.
So what's the point
in chasing that?

But there's goods
that money cannot buy.
And to have it
needn't ever sigh.

Something that
can be thus owned.
Not rented like
these stinky bones.

But as coin
must toil to acquire.
Knees thus buckled
and steeled by fire.

No graves in Egypt.
No place to lie.
This is the desert
where I die.

You leave me dumb
and deaf and blind.
So Mammon,
get thee thus behind.

And when I die:
it must be so.
The goods I own
when I must go.