At night darkness is best

 The daily power outage in Hampi
would sometimes last for three whole days,
but usually it was out
for only eight to ten hours a day

 The power outages were scheduled,
but the men in charge of distributing the power
never stuck to the schedule,
and the schedule changed
from week to week

 They send most of the power to the cities,
which waste it on lighting up the whole town at night

 Yeah
What a waste of power

 The sky at night
is more beautiful
when the lights are off

 Yeah
At night darkness is best
When I need light,
I use a candle
or a low-wattage bulb

 Yeah, no more than forty watts
No need to disturb
all the other beings
that prefer darkness at night

 I like to get up with the sun
and go to bed soon after it gets dark

 Me too
I love going to bed at seven

 Yeah,
seven is great

 Sometimes I stay up late,
but usually I go to bed between seven and eight

 I wonder how they decide
when to give us power
It seems to come at random

 I think there is a power struggle going on
in the switch room
Some of the guys want to obey the rules
and keep to the schedule
and others prefer to take bribes from the owners of factories
and other things that consume a lot of energy
and then sell our power to them

 Maybe they arm wrestle for control of the switch,
and the winner of each match,
gets to choose where the power goes
Pinning his opponent’s hand to the table
causes the switch to flip or
stay put
in his favor

 So the strongest guys get the power

 Maybe they just roll some dice now and then
to determine when and where
the power should be sent

 Maybe they’re all drunk
It could be that they spend the whole day drinking
and walking around in a drunken stupor,
and perhaps now and then one of them bumps into the switch by accident
and either cuts off the power
or begins to send it to us again

I like the system in Cuba
They had scheduled power outages when I was there
There would be a power outage in each neighborhood once a week,
and on that day the power would be out all day
In one neighborhood the power would be cut off every Thursday,
in another every Friday
and so on

Cuba has a few good systems in place
Power outages aren’t so bad
when you know when they’re going to be

Yeah
If the guys at the power station here
were to stick the schedule,
it would make a few things a bit easier

 Yeah

 The power then went out again
and everyone decided that it was time for bed
They made their way to their huts,
lay down
and fell asleep while listening to crickets and toads sing

 ♫ ♫ ♫