Where are the troubadours?

Who will sing our songs,

Tell our stories, shed our tears?

 

Our world has so much to say,

Yet our streets and courtyards

Boom with unrelenting silence.

I witness the horrors of another world,

Hear the cheers and jeers of strangers,

But my neighbour weeps in solitude,

Oblivious to the bonds we share,

Unknowing of my face, my voice, my heart.

 

Where are the troubadours?

Who will hear my story, my song,

Bring it to strangers in a familiar land?

 

Ghosts pass every day, unseen,

Faces held to the ground they trod,

Eyes focused on illusory distances,

Cacophonous words uncommunicated;

A wall of flesh and bone and cloth,

Devoid of spirit, absent of connection.

 

Where are the troubadours?

Who will touch our hearts, our souls,

With music, with stories, with love?

 

A strum of string. A strike of key.

Tremulous glottal vibration.

And an audience thirsting:

To see, to be seen;

To understand, to be understood;

To connect, to love.

 

Where are the troubadours?