Down in the marketplace, you took my hand, and carried on before, and carried on behind. The world it smells like crime, but I don’t mind, I don’t mind, between these hags and thieves and murderers we’ll find our own time. But the real test is the fear when there’s nobody near, and the thin air that’s between us, it will not interfere; and all truth and honesty, and all that lies between, are burned clean of the world, and set out naked, pure and mean.
When your spider-fingers crawl across my flesh, across my soul, there’s a recoil deep within and a mournful hearkening. It seems too late to trace what pays and what doesn’t pay; when love fritters at the door you just don’t let it crawl away. And it doesn’t come from night, and it doesn’t come from day; no, it comes from some strange sorcery and it will not go away. And once summoned, well, it glows, as every lover knows, all at once the red brand of despair and a beacon of repose.
Well, love it is true crime, it lives off unearned energy, but if we end up outlaws to ourselves it’s just what we’ll have to be. I don’t pretend to know why your eyes they sear me so, but I know the flames are licking now at the dead moon of my soul. Some strange alchemy is here of black magic, curse and prayer, and the litany of sighs you grant when I press you for a tear. Oh, the moon it swells and grows — as every lover knows — when that grim old couple, Day and Night, round out their love with light.