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Paradelle for a Proud Argentina

“Argentines have watched, horrified, as the meltdown dissolved more than their pocketbooks. Even the rich have been affected in their own way. The tragedy has struck hardest, however, among the middle class, the urban poor and the dirt farmers. Their parts of this once-proud society appear to have collapsed -- a cave-in so complete as to leave Argentines inhabiting a barely recognizable landscape.”
– Washington Post, August 6, 2002

Morning climbs up the sleek skin of skyscrapers.
Morning climbs up the sleek skin of skyscrapers.
Our broken bourgeois dines on cracked china.
Our broken bourgeois dines on cracked china.
Sleek china dines on the cracked bourgeois.
Broken of skyscrapers, morning climbs up our skin

Proud Argentina sleeps with a growling belly.
Proud Argentina sleeps with a growling belly.
There is food on the freeway and it’s still alive.
There is food on the freeway and it’s still alive.
It’s a proud freeway still growling with food.
Argentina is there alive and the belly sleeps on.

My tiny planet simmers with a fever of billions.
My tiny planet simmers with a fever of billions.
How can the good fortune fatten so few?
How can the good fortune fatten so few?
How the tiny fever of fortune simmers, so
My good planet can fatten with a few billions.

A bourgeois planet dines on morning. How good
is the growling of food alive. Fortune sleeps
there on a tiny few and our skin simmers
with the cracked fever of broken skyscrapers.
Still China climbs with my sleek Argentina.
Its proud billions belly up so the freeway can fatten.

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