Salt Slabs of Taghaza

Lyrics

The sun, a hammer on a white anvil.
The air itself is salt.
And on the tongue, a ghost of what is mined.
A taste of life. A taste of debt.

The village is called Taghaza.
The houses here are cut from the mine itself.
Walls of salt that sweat in the impossible heat.
A pickaxe rings.
It's the only song they have.
It sings a man's name is forgotten.
It sings this slab, this heavy page of earth,
weighs more than the body that broke to lift it.

Ounce for ounce.
Weight for weight.
The gold is good, a king once said, but the salt is life.
A caravan crawls south.
A silent trade across the sand.
What you need to live, for what you want to own.
A currency of sweat.
A coin of thirst.

Three hundred miles of nothing but the glare.
A dromedary's spine, a swaying metronome of pain.
The Moorish merchant counts the slabs, never the men.
He dreams of gold dust in a soft leather pouch.
He does not know the language of the ones who dug.
He will not speak the language of the ones who buy.
He will lay the white blocks in the dust, and walk away.
And wait.

Ounce for ounce.
Weight for weight.
The gold is good, a king once said, but the salt is life.
A caravan crawls south.
A silent trade across the sand.
What you need to live, for what you want to own.
A currency of sweat.
A coin of thirst.

Who decides this value?
Not the man with the pick, face caked in white.
Not the camel, dreaming of a well.
Is it the body that craves what it has lost to the sun?
The food that must not spoil before the rains?
The king who shines with a light he cannot eat?
They leave the gold. They take the salt.
No words are passed. No hand is shaken.
The bargain is the glare.
The bargain is the need.

A single slab, left behind.
Cracked like a map by the relentless sun.
The wind comes, and smooths the sand over the tracks.
The house of salt stands, watching nothing.
The air is white.
And on the tongue...
...a taste of life.