Status habitus
(Status habitus)

Lost in a labyrinth,
No boundary, no belongings,
No white felt cap,
Status habitus,
Sitting cross-legged,
Slantwise to the planet,
No identity papers,
My countryman
Speaks not of love
From each of the telephone booths,
Hi, hi! How’s it going back home,
It was hard to get through,
How’s Mum,
Status habitus refrain,
In big cities
Where the youth wastes away
Melting like lead
Crumbling like riverbanks
Status habitus,
Hey, what about the schools,
Hey, are there any jobs,
Hey, and in the hospitals
Are there corpses, are there,
Status habitus,
They poisoned the children,
In each of the telephone booths
You can recognize my countryman
Even without his identity papers,
To the big cities of the West
The river of exile
Keeps flowing and flowing,
Status habitus,
In the labyrinths
It seeks the road of return.

(Zym, 1991)