Trans Siberian Express - Momus

Catch a train direct to death

Glide where wheels and rails caress

Hear the last taboos expressed

In language looted and compressed

Abandon this world for the next

Cross the great plain of forgetfulness

Trans Siberian Express

Life on earth is short at best

The cities are a game of chess

Copper domes and statuettes

Victories with marble breasts

Leave your burden with the rest

Watch the sleepers phosphoresce

Trans Siberian Express

Rich man leave your wealthiness

Wanderer, your solemn dress

Seafarer, the sea’s caress

Beowulf, your angriness

Time to take a second guess

Time to make a pact with death

Trans Siberian Express

The world is long, there is no consolation

For those who join at the end of the line

Through the train the four winds blow

The arctic and the sirocco

Stalactite and stalagmite

Stalag camp and satellite

Pass the captives on death row

The gulag archipelago

The skulls of reindeer in the snow

The longboat drifts, the dead float slow

Frightened wolves, nowhere to go

Find winding cloths of sleet and snow

The sleeping kings of long ago

Deep beneath Ben Bulben grow

Drifts are shifted by the plough

Like waves that break against the prow

How do you like your blue-eyed boy now

Mr Death?

Before the crocus cloaked the steppes

Before the tadpoles and the nests

Jack Frost screamed, his voice so hoarse

The signalmen were blown off course

They passed Attila on his horse

Passed the Visigoths and Norse

Villages with Viking forts

And knew not where they were

The world is long, there is no consolation

For those who join at the end of the line

The skeletons were at the feast

Before the dreams of ancient Greece

Before the shaman and the priest

Jason and the Golden Fleece

Before the Dead Sea Scrolls released

Their meaning or the experts pieced together

The epic of Gilgamesh

Trans Siberian Express

Don’t cry for me I never cried for you

Just left without the name

Of the place I’m going to

Left without so much as a whisper to remind you

I’m travelling to forget you

And to find you