Idonia

When I saw you on the market, standing by the phone
 With your hair as dark as this, how could you be alone
 All the ghosts in love with you, they craned their sorry necks
 Like a Viennese machine that's just discovered sex
 When I saw you on the bridge, you had to look away
 If I thought to follow you, I'd just get in the way
 Reaching for eternity, reaching for a chair
 Reaching for the woman who is never even there, boys
 Never even there
 When I saw your fingers folded round your albatross
 Staring through the kitchen wall at everything you've lost
 Losing comes so easily when you acquire the taste
 Life is long and life is lost and life is such a waste, boys
 Life is just a waste
 See the wrinkles in my hand, I am the lizard's son
 Waiting for the alchemist to touch me with the sun
 When I saw your photograph, I knew we'd never meet
 You were called Idonia, and I stayed in the street, boys
 I stayed in the street
 When I saw your eyes were closed, that was the best thing yet
 Then you drove a caravan across this flimsy set
 Crushed beneath your wheels still, my heart goes beating on
 Beating for Idonia and everything she's done, boy
 Everything she's done
 When I saw your pharaoh coming, handsome gypsy lad
 With his memory still wet from all the fun he had
 Funny how your ceiling is somebody else's floor
 Feeling for Idonia beside a market store, boys
 Who won't be back no more