We walked down a long promenade Down a winding stair, wide as boulevards Vines and shrubs grew between the steps From the Spanish town to the African sea
We drank wine and toasted to the day When she was the queen, before the long decay We drank wine, slept off hangovers Lethargy, decay and forgotten loves
We'd awake to the BBC An old English queen on the balcony Wander 'round abandoned consulates An old broken chair on the marble stair And from the roof, see Canary seas The discarded runway of Sidi Ifni
We drank wine lying on our backs On the warm tarmac, in a bowl of stars
Well, I went down, mostly on my own Till I was alone in that shipwrecked house Through the porthole sea an epiphany I would never leave this place alive I drink gin with the old ex-pats We are broken things, from a broken past And it comes near; but just out of grasp The alchemist words that would bring her back