Three Suns to a Cowrie (Reprise)

Lyrics

Here we are again.
On this same shore.

The sun is the same sun.
The water, the same turquoise ache.
The women walk the low tide line, their ankles wet.
Woven baskets on their hips.
Fingers sorting the Monetaria moneta.
The little money shells, still alive.
They carry them up the beach to the soft sand.
To bury them for their quiet death.
A small kindness before the long journey.

And I have to ask again.
Holding that one perfect shell in your palm,
did you feel the weight of it?
Not the weight of calcium and ocean,
but the weight of West Africa?
The weight of a Shang Dynasty tomb?
The weight of the next five thousand years?

From the sand to the basket.
From the basket to the dhow.
A ripple starts in the Indian Ocean.
A story whispered from port to port.
This little shell, a promise made solid.
Passed from your hand to a merchant from Oman.
Traded for spice, for silk, for a man's freedom,
or for the chains that would take it.

And I have to ask again.
Holding that one perfect shell in your palm,
did you feel the weight of it?
Not the weight of calcium and ocean,
but the weight of West Africa?
The weight of a Shang Dynasty tomb?
The weight of the next five thousand years?

Ibn Battuta saw it.
He wrote it down in his book.
'The money of the islanders.'
He saw the system, the elegant logic.
But he didn't see the ships using them for ballast.
He didn't see the glass case in the British Museum.
He didn't see the end of the line.
We see it. We're standing at the end of the line, looking back.

And you're still there.
On the beach.
The sun is going down.
You hold one last shell up to the light.
Just a shell.
Just the start of everything.