Tragic Kingdom

Here sat Babylon

Fattened by the purses of the worst and wrong

Where the decadent tastes of Hell grew strong

Like a curse upon

This tragic kingdom

Dusk descended like a final curtain

On this stage only death was certain

Singing through the turrets

Like a velvet serenade

Played near a grave

Sentries and gentry, afforded the bloom

Of a red setting sun and a bloodletting moon

Applauded, then accorded them

Portents of doom

Almost too soon...

They pissed upon the winds

That rocked the cradles

Laughing over those hovels grovelling to wolves

They kissed and sinned

Under overstocked tables

As the world outside grew sodden and mauled

Here sat Babylon

Fattened by the purses of the worst and wrong

Where the decadent tastes of Hell grew strong

Like a curse upon

This tragic kingdom

Gilles sat sipping damson absinthe

From a goblet made of bone

As lightning ripped and danced upon

The flagstones

Wayward fantasies marched on home

Now the treetops bowed to whisper

In a thin Disney veneer

They knew the howls so exquisitely honed

Were those of children, disappeared

They'd listened to the winds

Heard the murdered Abel

Re-christened in the stone jaws of Tiffauges

Where the list of sins

Grew beyond a fable

They now roared abroad, restless with debauch

Restless with debauch

Restless with debauch

This tragic kingdom

Would see God's angels walk

Away...

Satanic, enigmatic

His black magic was ecstatic

Megalomaniac in titanic displays

Dressed in the best

Wicked britches of the West

He cut a mourning figure in glorious swathe

But all his nightmares would come true

Drowning in a stream of unbounded pleasure

Here sat Babylon

Fattened by the purses of the worst and wrong

Where the decadent tastes of Hell grew strong

Like a curse upon

This tragic kingdom

Like a curse upon

This tragic kingdom

The moon bleared through the skeletal trees

Averting her face from congenital deeds

Thus eves grew murky, haunted, grieved

About this place laced with demon seed

Blanchet, a priest, his book of lies

Exonerated him from Gilles' crimes

Announced his fears, one night of sighs

A night for cursing nursery rhymes

In the light of the fire wrestling feckless shadows

(The track gets blacker for this tragic kingdom)

Gilles' frightening wealth, his tightening grip

On the weak and the rubies that his coffers let slip

Steered to near ruin in successive years

Of the most of excess and the best of it here

In the light of the fire wrestling reckless shadows