Pictures at an Exhibition (studio version): I. Promenade / II. The Gnome / III. Promenade / IV. The Sage / V. The Hut of Baba Yaga / VI. The Great Gates of Kiev 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