Modern - Peter Hammill

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