John Cale - The High And Mighty Road

Before the end of the beginning, before the finish credits role, there is a brief but brutal truth along the high and mighty road. Faces tend to run together, names be lost and legends told, of the ways to be forgiven on that high and mighty road.
There is a will to test the power, there is the struggle for control of the basic rights of passage along the high and mighty road.
It is a journey for the taking, it is a choice that can be made.
It is the soul that may be shaken, it is the spirit to be sane.

There is hypocrisy and wonder, when fortunes pale and empires home to an ancient way of magic along a high and mighty road.
Money changers seeking payments for the priviledged to be so bold, to say the train is not too crowded for a high and mighty road.
And the courage may be tested, by judgement harsh and cold, from the monitors of progress along that high and mighty road.
There are the words that have been spoken, there is the life that's been portayed, it is a promise to be broken, it is the joy that dies in vain.
Pale treasure, fragile beauty, or the messages set in coal, we delivered as nostalgic on that high and mighty road.

Sacrifice and deprivation are spiteful paradoxes sold as begrudging restitutions along that high and mighty road.
And yet the faces, oh God the faces, they seldom change from young to old, they only seem to grow more brazen along the high and mighty road.
It is the future we are trading, it is the prices that we pay, it is the mind that is mistaken, it is the heart we give away.