1988 - ECLIPSE DAS SCHWARZE DENKMAL LP/MC/CD


AUSTRIA

The lights went out in winter,
January nineteen eighty one.
Your dreams, your name, your ghost,
You cannot know the drama of exile...
So many letters, so many years,
A slow ship to die.
His empty silence / his nervous smile.
Really I'm waiting for the last day.
His distant eyes / his bleeding past;
You don't know where I am.
He hold the gift of the martyrs
On your endless nights.
Wonderful sister of my agony,
You sleep alone in the dark.
The names of the saints are on the stone,
At the feet of the black statue.
You sleep alone / your soul is broken
In a wasted and silent place.
You sleep alone / your soul is fading...
In my memory.


ECLIPSE

Watching those flowers burning out tonight
Screams and soft lovers, memories of a fight.
Slowly the clouds are fading into a cage,
While from my hands is falling another page...
Dreams and lost days are burning in the past,
Velvet black rays are drifting now so fast,
And in the great light I cannot see no more
Where is the right side, where is the golden door.
Mornings and colors are playing out of here,
Because I don't remember the memories of fear,
The aura of the moondawn is loosing her contours,
Sweet angels of heaven are missing their return.
Echoes of whispers so similar to paint,
Distant, so distant, like diamonds in the rain,
And if for a moment there lights are on your lips,
I know, there's no answer, but a wonderful eclipse.


RIVER OF NO RETURN

Lost in this final night
I look at those words
That I have seen dry
In every missing day...
And see I'm falling down,
Too down to get in.
And the lights now are phantoms in the dawn.

River of no return.
River of no return.
The memories are so thin
And like tears are glittering
In a short distant ray
So so vanishing.
And so baby,
Don't look so sad at my hands
And so the spectres...
'Cause I'm no more here...
River of no return,
River in which I'm drifting now,
River, the edges are waitin' in your hotel
Of no return.
River Of no return,
River in which I'm drifting now.


THE CHRIST

Along those ways in the sky of November,
Marching souls that I cannot recall,
Lost in the cold of this eternal curtain,
Raising memories so far from the end.
Laying in the silence that lives all around me,
I call your name against the wall of this pain,
And if it's true that the children are playin' out
It's really true I don't know what I'm doing
In this old place,
In the winter of heaven,
I've lost all the things that have broken my dreams,
And if the angels are burning their wings here,
I've lost the words to whisper them my love.

In those deserts of ice, steel and iron,
Under the rain that never stops falling,
I know, the treasures and jewels are buried
Under this rain that cleans the marks of the slaves
Don't tell me I'm dreaming 'cos I know what's happening,
While all the flowers are praying to despair.
To catch their lives in the silence of love,
There's no more time, no more place to resist.
In this old place in the winter of heaven...
There's no more time for us,
There's no more place to resist
Only our hearts to embrace all these ruins
And give them to the light as the final sweet gift
In this old place in the winter of heaven...
There's no more time, there's no more place to resist
In this old place in the winter of heaven...


AURA

See the snow and the red flowers in the fall, strains of marble on the angel with crying eyes,
Passing shadows in the fire of the last room
And like spectres wrap around the ashen sky.
Distant words and the last island is now near,
Like a Bocklin's picture now the sea is quiet.
He is Christ and she is Christ
And near the cross
They are angels falling in the silent sky.
Touch my body for an instant in this dawn,
Touch the stone, it's cold like the heart of your church
And if you can feel something special in your tears,
Remember, ghosts like me are roses for your years
Because the black names will return
To drown the roses of your dreams,
Because the stigmata are bleeding
Over the sanctuaries of the rain
And if you can't forget the pain of this return,
It doesn't matter, now the time is not your friend,
Remember all you want remember if you want
And no one scream and no one tear could give me life.
Touch my body for an instant in this dawn
Touch the stone, it is cold like the heart of your church
And if you can feel something special in your tears,
Remember, ghosts like me are roses for your years.
And all the gates of the cemetery
Are closed forever on your reasons.
Only mercy's eyes will shine
Over the dark lights of your treason.


EPITAPH
(written by Peter Sinfield, released by King Crimson in 1969 on In The Court Of The Crimson King LP)

The wall on which the prophets wrote
Is cracking at the seams.
Upon the instruments of death
The sunlight brightly gleams.
When every man is torn apart
With nightmares and with dreams,
Will no one lay the laurel wreath
As silence drowns the screams.

Confusion will be my epitaph.
As I crawl a cracked and broken path
If we make it we can all sit back and laugh.
But I fear tomorrow I'll be crying.
Yes I fear tomorrow I'll be crying.

Between the iron gates of fate,
The seeds of time were sown,
And watered by the deeds of those
Who know and who are known;
Knowledge is a deadly friend
When no one sets the rules.
The fate of all mankind I see
Is in the hands of fools.


A NOTHING LIFE
(written by Patrick Leagas, released by Sixth Comm in 1987 on A Nothing Life MC)

I think of you now standing all alone
In a life that's passed a time that's gone before
A quick pain will come to close your tired eyes
There's no more hurt there's no more loving ties
And sweet Jesus talks, talks with bastard lies
The smell of the soil, evergreens the pines and ice
Was tortured and bled in a nothing life
Now tortured and dead for a nothing life
My brothers in woe, my brothers in war
And they are still standing, standing all alone
Desider of fate a child insane
A face that tells all things wise
That face of youth has shrivelled and died
My brothers in woe, my brothers in war