Paradise? Paradise?
It is lost on you, I wonder.
Evil bewitched the gardens
She calls upon-
The bloom that's off the rose, she is,
From the gooey dawn,
Letting loose her unbinding
Miasmic buds.
Devilish eglantines!
Dodders and garlic!
Moondrakes, spider orchids,
And Turkic silk-turned flowers!
Paradise? Paradise?
She calls to you, Henry,
Like a siren.
A siren, a siren-
A succubus,
But she bears no fruit for you,
She's the bloom
That's off the King Rose.
Henry, don't listen
To her silly warbling.
She'so no bird, no healing phoenix-
She's Homer's chimera!
With her shining claws,
Evil and all,
A bloom that's off the rose.
She made this medieval hellscape.
Henry, beware! Beware!
The sun turned into a marble
And rolled over,
Like the balls of a broken abacus
Belonging to a wealthy Austrian autocrat.
And it goes! Upon the Tuscan hills,
And down the steppes of Judea.
Beware, beware!
Henry, it's the end of the world-
Armageddon!
Armageddon, they call it!
And I know all of it.
I have always been one for eschatology.
Beware, Henry! Beware!
They won't hang the garlands
Of Adriatic figs and Spanish oranges anymore
Around that false Marian apparition,
That ghastly figurine
In which hides beside the decorated dais,
Ornately ornamented,
Like some sort of Machievallian
Snake through its Corinthian columns
Of black, veined brown
And a burning fire.
Godly reredos!
As if she's some holy grail
To your maladies.
O Henry, O round table knight,
O whatever you are!
Paradise won't come anymore.
Not here, not like this!
O Henry-
Paradise? Paradise?
She's the chimera,
She's the mystery you know!
The great whore,
The Lady of Babylon!
Annihilating the terra-
The bloom that's off the King Rose!
She has none of its fruits.
So-
Go, Henry! To her!
Go, and you'll never come home.
