| Lyrics: | The golden dream, the seat of all decorum,
a satellite to match the light of Rome:
its
silver children chatter in the Forum,
the bath-house, and the brothels, and their
homes
about the latest fashions for their clothes.
Across the Tyrrhenian Sea comes
drifting
a song that none of them have ever known.
The golden dream that holds back
all the hours
for the ladies in their Dionysian rites,
blonde heads all garlanded with
flowers:
wine and love and laughter through the night
in constant masque and pageant,
constant flight.
The ground below them whispers in a murmur
of passion which is hotter yet
than white.
The golden dream, the city of all cities,
its towers piercing into the
azure sky,
whose hand is dealt, regarless of all pity:
condemned to martyrdom, but not to
die.
Two lovers look up from their hidden bower.
The wine has stood too long and it turns
sour.
I see the tall and bending of your streets
but now they echo only leather
tourist feet
and waking, ashen, grey-blue blinding death
your sudden
winding-sheet.
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