Riding the tram

Riding the tram, choo, choo
Here I am
Running the rails again
Run, run Roman rails
Run through gullies and arches
Stones laid by men long ago
At the end of terrific marches

Run in the stinking light of dawn
Chock-a-blocked like chocolate shops
Cars and trains, cranes and cans
Being kicked, lowered, spilled and rammed
in traffic jams
In the Roman way
Kind of straight like the Danube
But running wheels ran
Like curly currents of the river
Or white gulls that scan
With their photographic memory of
Every fish they ever landed
Implanted like spies
In the minds of fishermen who stand
But never minded

Altogether elsewhere, the river strains
And the land extends its hand
Evidence of man
In castles and squares
Protesters meet and chant
Play blazing, strident revolutionary music
That shocks people, in amazement
They too stand and stare
At this band of loyal half-brothers
Blood brothers perhaps
Surrounded by a ring of cops

In another time it could have been
a folk dance, some dramatic scene
Displayed by actors frozen in character
But for the reality of visceral movements
Voices and chants of down with Orbán
Which Puts it squarely in Széll Kálmán Tér
The year two thousand and nineteen