"Modern" lyrics - 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.