Pictures at an Exhibition (medley, live at the Mar y Sol Festival, Puerto Rico, 4.12.72) Songtext
von Emerson, Lake & Palmer

Promenade

Lead me from tortured dreams
Childhood themes of nights alone,
Wipe away endless years,
childhood tears as dry as stone.

From seeds of confusion,
illusions darks blossoms have grown.
Even now in furrows of sorrow
the dance still is sung.

My life′s course is guided
decided by limits drawn
on charts of my past days
and pathways since I was born.

The Sage

I carry the dust of a journey
that cannot be shaken away
It lives deep within me
For I breathe it every day.


You and I are yesterday's answers;
The earth of the past came to flesh,
Eroded by Time′s rivers
To the shapes we now possess.

Come share of my breath and my substance,
and mingle our stream and our times.
In bright, infinite moments,
Our reasons are lost in our rhymes.

The Curse of Bab Yaga

Doubles faces dark defense
Talk too loud but talk no sense
Yeah I see those smiling eyes
Butter us up with smiling lies

Talk to creatures raise the dead
Fate you know sure got fed
Trained apart from houses of stone
Hour of horses pick the bone

The Great Gates of Kiev

Come forth, from love spire
Born in life's fire,
born in life's fire.
Come forth, from love′s spire


In the burning, all are (of our) yearning,
for life to be.
And the pain will (must) be gain,
new life!

Stirring in, salty streams
and dark hidden seams
where the fossil sun gleams.

They were, sent from (to) the gates
Ride the tides of fate,
ride the tides of fate.
They were, sent from (to) the gates

In the burning all are (of our) yearning,
For life to be.

There′s no end to my life,
no beginning to my death
Death is life.