Peter Hammill's: Modern

Modern

Jericho's strange, throbbing with life at its heart
people are drawn together, simultaneously torn apart....
Foundations are shattered in the city
inside the barricaded doors;
hiding behind their walls, lonely as night falls,
maybe the people are waiting for trumpets.

Babylon's strange, seventh wonder of the earth
gardens ablaze in colour, slowly rotting in the dirt
and, with your head on fire, you can't really see.
The hanging gardens sing,
but with a hollow ring :
the life is false, it's killing me....

Don't look back or you'll turn to stone;
look around before your life is overgrown
with concrete slabs.
On your back the searching eyes that stab
between chintz curtains, glinting,
but never owning to a name...
like the inmates of asylums
all the citizens are contagiously insane....

Atlantis is strange, the explosion of an age
no-one really knows what to do,
and the city is a cage.
It traps in ashen hours and concrete towers,
imprisons in the social order.
The city's lost its way,
madness takes hold today...
I can't live under water.