while the weary nations weep awakening me from a dream I see the moonlight steal across my sheets my love is lying fast asleep chasing its beams she stirs, and then she turns her back to me the clouds overhead open up for the wicked and just all the same and lay low the hills, so to fill every valley below to the brim but like the sun that turns the sky illuminating all, in time the tables in the temple will be turned on their side and just as it scorches up the dunes beneath the height of noon the pillars of the empire will be burned, in kind and by the holy rock I stand as blessed as the sacred ram I see the trail of shoulders I climbed over, but by god, I'll bloody up my hands with everything I am to cut away the mountains I've made and fill the dales below

between the seams that line your living room a vine of ivy's pushing her way through and as she creeps along, she sinks her roots into the cracks, to pull 'em back until the structure's coming loose and the way the shadows on the wall are cast look like a twisted apparition from the past and all the memories come flooding fast a wilderness you kinda miss, but were taught you ought to cut it back so you shut it out you shout it down until you're all white-knuckled you got a lot to learn, if you'd settle down let be what is, let be what isn't it's a natural world in which we're living and if you let it alone, it will surely grow just leave it alone, child, and let it go and when all your ziggurats have crumbled down and every stone is thrown like seeds across the ground a new Arcadia will come around and multiply until the binds of death have been unwound so don't you shut it out don't you shout it down and get your feathers ruffled you got a lot to learn, if you'd just settle down and let the river run its course 'cause see, the ground all around it was always holy leave the ruins where they fall leave them all and let the wild take over

spinning that stone uphill again like atonement for a bygone sin under the weight of it, my bones cracking like a dry branch in a westward wind but Zeus and his pantheon of kin take the first nine out of every ten minas, like lightning changing hands it all returns back to his pockets, in the end you can't take any gold or rings further than the grave nothing we make can we bring but still the bait hanging from the string is calling my name and like the wind it slips again out of my fingers as Fortuna sits idly by, I spin her wheel with all my might crushing my kin for warring-wage minted from the ivory of your tooth and eye under the table where she dines, I sit hungry with my mouth foamed white fighting for crumbs that trickle down as she finishes her cake, then takes a bite from mine

stamping your heels along with the drum praying the serpent's underneath one of 'em like there's some villain left to defeat instead of a dance with a rhythm and beat ‘cause you've been too busy thinking ahead of where we're all going after we're dead to maybe consider our bodies are worth more than the dust that we can return to the ground again we turn that old wheel round again well, even the great celestial hieroglyphs are bodies of dust illuminated, and if the heavens can be both sacred and dust oh, maybe so can the rest of us ‘cause I've seen the line of ocean and shore the tumbling tide of water and soil and I've seen the day's fading begin the gradient wake of the sun that spins around again it'll burn that old wheel down in the end