Landscape Lyrics

Level upon level of wash and stone

Cab drivers yelling that each one, each one's alone

A forced-up smile when casting your eyes

Insanity reigns on streets of no size

High crumbling walls of stones that have seen

The rigors of war and have never been cleaned

A modern pay turnpike in midst of it all

While an old woman works in a garden with trowel

Trees are just blooming, I've come just in time

Purple spring flowers in rebirth pantomime

A miniature red castle in black craggy pass

Jig-saw puzzle houses the resultants of mass

The top of a mountain cut off by the mist

And a white serene temple in space does exist

The lemon trees, oranges, and cactus alike

The growth of a vineyard with grapes not yet ripe

A truck is forced off as big as a house

While dawdling along like a little green mouse

A long sweeping view expounds my belief

And clear restless water with an absence of reef

Evolutions and cycles we come face to face

While foliage drifts in green filmy lace

Now rough and then coarse soon velvet to touch

Octagonal mosaic on a church that is such

And columns of clouds go boiling across

The mountains that stop them and suffer no loss

Head reeling cliffs that fall down to sea

While people are sleeping they hang peacefully

But the trucks rolling blindly are waking them up

To talk quietly murmuring over the morning's first cup

Arches and steps are seen everywhere

Manmade and Godmade and one made of air

The essence of time is virtually gone

Day goes and night comes, I breathe up my lawn

Buona sera, buona sera is a faithful reply

From any stranger you pass who catches your eye

And pinpoints of brilliance, some moving, some still

Are caught in the glass of my window sill

The pinpoints I mentioned I don't speak of stars

But then, think again, it's funny they are

Stars made by man who himself is a star

If only he'd realize the powers that are

And all he's got to do is lay down and play dead

And now looky here Vesuvius looms overhead

(cddtom)