Viviane

I watch you lie here sleeping, my sweet Viviane,
and I think about you living with that old magic man.
You were just seventeen when he took you in.
You'd come back from Boston, lonely and thin.

And he showed you his camera, and he said with a laugh,
"I'm master of the world in all I photograph.

Yes, the moments that I capture remain
young as rosebuds in rain.
And all the beauty I see,
I bind it to me."

You learned well from your master, my sweet Viviane,
but you came to despise your old magic man.
In a world full of pictures and splendors all around,
you were part of their beauty and so you too were bound.

So one night while he slept, you crept in for the kill.
You tied him to the bedpost and you caught it on film.

And the moment that you captured remains:
the master caught in his chains,
and his student now free –
until the day you met me.

Well I see where we're heading, my sweet Viviane.
I see that I've replaced your old magic man.
I love you with a love that I want not to age.
But my loving falls down around you like the bars of a cage.

And this song that I sing, it binds me as well:
a man and his hoping, condemned to one cell.

Yes, the moments that we've captured will remain
young as rosebuds in rain.
But before you awake,
I'm going to go, for Love's sake.

Tam Lin