From the shades of the battle came a (?) sounds
Hammering eardrums and singing your grace
The moon sunk the man eating serpent sundown
And on his head on a pale ancient face

You are the tide never touching the shore
Receding of earth as day's birth being long
Beneath you the mountains and piles of whales
And I had to hide your poem in a song

Coward
My mask is my trade
Coward
On the back of your beauty I sing like a slave

In the magic magnetic new nurture of night
Your bosom should hold me for fear of my breath
Reflecting for fools in the mirror of might
The impossible lights in your body of death

Buried in valleys are hundreds of men
Who (?) your body in weather and wrong
And I ride their graves with no thoughts of them then
And I had to hide your poem in a song

Coward
My mask is my trade
Coward
On the back of your beauty I sing like a slave
Coward
My mask is my trade
Coward
On the back of your beauty I sing like a slave