Lou Reed - The City In The Sea Shadow Lyrics

Death has reared himself a throne



In a strange city

alone



Death has reared himself a throne

In a strange city

alone

Their shrines and palaces are not like ours

They do not tremble and rot

Eaten with time



Death has reared himself a throne



Lifted by forgotten winds

Resignedly beneath the sky

The melancholy waters lie

A crown of stars



In a strange city

alone



A heaven God does not condemn

But the everlasting shadow

Makes mockery of it all



No holy rays come down

Lights from the lurid deep sea

stream up the turrets silently

Up thrones, up arbors

Of sculpted ivy and stone flowers

Up domes, up spires

Kingly halls all are melancholy shrines

The columns, frieze and entablature

Chokingly shockingly intertwined

The mast the viol and the vine

Twisted



There amid no earthly moans

Hell rises from a thousand thrones

Does reverence to death

And death does give his undivided time



There are open temples

and graves on a level with the waves

Death looms and looks

huge

gigantic

There is a ripple

now a wave

Towers thrown aside

Sinking in the dull tide

The waves glowing redder

The very hours losing their breath



All the cunning stars

watching fitfully over night after night of

matchless ........ sleep

matched only with the whole of dream .......

The tell-tale beating of the heart

the ......... breath

The desire, the pose

one poses upon the precipice

to fall to run to dive to tumble to fall down

down into the spiral down and then

One sees one's own death

one sees one committing murder or atrocious violent acts

and t