No gleaming temple forever stands -
Your idols lay beneath, beneath the shifting sands.
No endless darkness, no blinding light,
No treasured ideal, not one vice.
No sacred law, no holy command,
No final verdict to which we are damned,
No Armageddon, no final rest,
And no paradise beyond our death.
For no word of the wise, no law benign,
Will ever change the wolf and the lion.
All revolution - all salvation, never as they predict!
All solutions and all revelations lead a path to conflict.
Not one penance, not one resolute,
Not one confession, no matter how true,
No blood that is split or life cut short
In the name of the father, the mother, the cause.
Utopia is dead!
So what happens as I walk through the ashes?
A trial of our blood, our blood and our scars?
Well, our questions betray us - our hopes and our fears,
Relinquish both, and then you may hear.
No dream of the wise, no law benign -
Will ever change the wolf and the lion.