Walls of Montevideo

Boulevard of Broken Dreams

There's dirt on the floor.
And pigeons.
Echoes flutter through the hall.
Swallows overhead. Driftwood everywhere.
Cans and seaweed and the cry of gulls.
I smell Havanna cigars.
Horse hooves on cobblestones. Listen how they gallop away.
Far away to Argentina. To
the grass-covered plain with the quail,
partridge, and crow.
Oranges, lemons, citrons and myrtles, she thought,
wool and cotton, timber and lumber
timber and lumber, and sugarcane.
But the cocoa and manicoe do not abound there as in the islands of the Plata.
And oh the tango -
Have you packed dear? Hurry up hurry up
Pull up your skirts, don't soil the hem
He looked at the girl, she wanted to run
He said better calm down, think of the sea
Would the ship strike a riff, Sir, and founder with me?

The famous South Sea Swindler is sailing in a ship's jolly boat
with his pockets stuffed with money bags
and his hands crammed with bonds and debentures.
New horizons. Traditional values. Now all is left here amongst the flotsam.
So effectively do slavery, sorrow, and ill usage destroy the finer fabric of man.


- William Henry Hayes (1829?-1877), adventurer, swindler and blackbirder, best known as 'BULLY', amongst many other things accused of assault on a young girl on one of his ships.
(Montevideo magazijnen, Antwerpen, april 2010 - http://flic.kr/s/aHsjw7Vu2L)