Digging For Some Words

Digging For Some Words - Johnny Clegg/Juluka/Sipho Mchunu

Wanderers and nomads

Have gone to see their chieftains

Will this be the end

Of the rain and the birds

Who can send an emissary

To speak to the seasons

For the ravens and the crows

Already soak up the skies

I'm digging for some words

Beneath the stones in Zimbabwe

I'm searching for a drum song

In the jungles of Zaire

I'm groping for the blood moon

In the mountains of Malawi

Looking for the lion of Ethiopia

Settling dusk gets darkened

By the bark of the baboon

The frogs and the owls

No longer call to the moon

The warlords have gathered

Blue smoke hiss from teeth of chrome

And the baobab trembles

In the boiling blood loam

The fireplace is broken

And the grinding stone too

It's million pieces flung

Across the plains of Africa

Each dusty fragment

A seed from which grows

The memory of a debt

That only you and I will know

Wanderers and nomads have gone

To see their chieftains

Will this be the end

Of the rain and the birds

Who can send an emissary

To speak to the seasons

For the ravens and the crows

Already soak up the skies

Seven seasoned soldiers

Have been summoned from Saigon

A craven walkie talkie

Puts their bloodshot armor on

Some drink beer milk

Some drink kinky kola

Sheep dogs live in Outeniqua

Gun dogs in Angola

Flames lick the corners of each

Hungry horseman's smile

They have locusts in their scabbards

And desert's in their eyes

Passing through the air

They leave a sea of fetid rumors

As they ride upon the skyline

On a secret trail of lies

Wanderers and nomads have gone

To see their chieftains

Will this be the end

Of the rain and the birds

Who can send an emissary

To speak to the seasons

For the ravens and the crows already

Soak up the skies

I found some words beneath

A stone in Zimbabwe

I heard a distant drum song

In the jungles of Zaire

The blood moon spoke of war

In the mountains of Malawi

But I never found the lion of Ethiopia

Wanderers and nomads have gone

To see their chieftains

Will this be the end

Of the rain and the birds

Who can send an emissary

To speak to the seasons

For the ravens and the crows

Already soak up the skies