The City

The City Outside the city where the pomegranates grow In a land where they never see rain or snow And where the sun only shines every other day Is where it’s always the twenty-fifth of May. We find a people downtrodden and tired: Lacklustre, bored and uninspired. It’s been this way for many generations Ever since mutually respectful relations Broke down suddenly one fateful night When an alien and a resident got in to a fight Over a girl (of course, couldn’t you guess?) The alien lost the fight and in his eagerness To regain his superiority and the upper hand Placed a dreadful curse across the land: He condemned the residents who were there that day To relive over and over again the twenty-fifth of May And to find sunshine only every forty-eight hours It was a vicious abuse of his alien powers The people cried “This is cruel and unfair!” He told them “Give me the girl with the golden hair And I’ll give you back the lives you had before And I promise that you’ll hear from me no more” The people consulted, talked and reached a decision That they would never change their position “The girl is one of us and does not want to be Taken away from her family, her friends, her community” They told the all-powerful petulant alien being Who was reluctantly forced into agreeing To remove the curse he’d placed upon that place But he felt no sense of shame or disgrace For he had learned a lesson about human-kind: That when they are all of one mind It was almost impossible to defeat them by fear And that it’s their principles that they hold most dear Above fear of death or brutal subjugation And they shrugged off hardship and intimidation. But it was their love and caring for one another That was their greatest strength above all other. The alien realised he could not win the battle And that the people he ruled over were more than cattle Now, outside the city where the pomegranates grow Kids and adults revel in the rain and snow And May twenty-fifth is celebrated as a holiday Because it’s the day that the alien rulers went away.