Idonia - Robyn Hitchcock

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