A festival of torches
Joins the light of the Moon
Shining in the lake
Sleeping with the stars
As good Christians
Illuminate the garden
Human candles
Burning under roman skies

Nero lights up the night
18th to 19th of July, AD 64

Paul dies, Peter dies
Lions among men
Damnation to beasts
Almost too hard to believe

Nero lights up the night
18th to 19th of July, AD 64

The princess of Wales
Her sexual drive
Stop dead under the river
In the capital of romance
The most hunted
Body of the modern age
Flowers crown her head
Ancient goddess of the moon

Nero lights up the night
18th to 19th of July, AD 64

I have seen the world you believe in
Black ships with rats, dead Caesars and sons
Hear the children sing, they cry murder
What is done is done and there is more to come

Poor little sister
I hope you understand
The babe in the woods
Will be taken by a wolf

The second coming means nothing to me
I have tasted death, every body and thing
I long for my own, for the curtain to fall
To wipe the blood off the face of the earth

Poor little sister
I hope you understand
The babe in the woods
Will be taken by a wolf

Legends fail
And houses fall
In great shame
In elliptical ruins

A king gouges his eyes out
Forbidden love takes poison

Tragedies repeat themselves
In perfect circle
Wrong, wrong, wrong
(As in death)

As Colossus stands
So shall Rome
When Colossus falls
Rome shall fall
When Rome falls
So falls the world

I want to tell you something
About the grace of faded things
The draped compositions
Hiding from the new world
Behind old French doors
The last rays of the setting sun
On the cheeks of cherub faces
The traces of their tears

But you do not listen
Your mind is somewhere else
I speak with a frozen tongue
In a dead language

There' s a world between us
There' s a sunken garden
Love lies bleeding there
And words they mean nothing
To anyone anymore

An army charges upon the land
To the sound of retreat
This is bigger than us
A stronger wind is blowing
Blowing from Paradise
Into the world to come
Progress is its name
Death nods his head

First the dead
Then the living
Call their names
Like a legion

Their steps are retreating
Out of the earth and the sea
Back to the beginning of time
An endless beach
Where a table has been set for one
With salt and water
Lay down the kid
And turn around and leave

First the dead
Then the living
Call their names
Like a legion

I've been staggering
Ever since the shot in Rome
On Wednesday May 13, 1981
The golden ball saw it all
Down through the ages
In childbed and deathbed

Flooded with light
The daughters of the church

St. Teresa of Avila
St. Teresa of Lisieux
They were rewarded by God
For loving him
They knew the forms
Of the transverberation

A spiritual wounding of the heart
In the form of a mystical vision
A physical wounding of the heart
By a dart or a flame of love

St. Teresa of Avila
St. Teresa of Lisieux

In the year of the Lord
The word became flesh
But our bodies now
Will bleed as before
Nothing has changed
Since the late sixties

We all must carry
Rosemary's baby
Helter skelter

On the surface of the Moon
A heart of darkness
Let it bleed
Inside yourself
For your father
All the way alive
Inside Golden Gate
There used to be a house
At 6114 California St.

Helter skelter

I have been thinking
About my life lately
These old streets
This same old song
Of smoke and mirrors
And sweet, sweet revenge

Sigh my heart
But do not break

I have to make right
The things that went wrong
To forgive and forget
There is honor among thieves

How to come clean
With these dirty hands
They hold me down
With a strangling love

My family
My children
My haven
My hope
What have I done
To leave you here