From within the safety of the train compartment Memories, written in stone, glide by There’s the Roman church With the statue of the priest and his dog And the enigmatic farm Where llamas and ostriches stride And that one funky albino kangaroo And after that comes the castle Which in my mind is inhabited By an anachronistic loner A degenerate nobleman Who hides within his fortress Hoping that the days of old come back And after wasted grandeur comes earnest cosines Carefree children playing football While their grandfathers smoke And discuss the Tour de France And eat Boules de Berlin Images that I have seen a hundred times before But the celebration of triviality Has never been so precious to me As these images, gliding by, through the window Written inside my memory