Steppenwolf

You can see my eyes are lupine
The liquid golden fires glare
My loping walk, my slinking spine
Are signs that there is something there
The way my nostrils flare for odour
The way my ears prick up for sound
My hair's electrically aware
Tells me things for miles around

I am a man-wolf, I am a wolf man
I have half a canine mind
I have half the mind of a man
I am neither of one kind
Maybe it was only an hallucination
I'm no stranger to such things
I made a thorough investigation
The image had a power that clings
To my jaded imagination
My brain has found the bells it rings

Like a wolf my wilful loafing
My languishing alone in my lair
Where you will never hear me laughing
I'm half in love with dark and despair
The Moon's a howling, mouth of mercury
Quicksilver quivering in the sky
It echoes like a cave of chromium
That'll vacuum up my soul when I die

I am a wolf man, I am a man-wolf
A freak, a fiend, a figment of mind
A species of the steppes and city
I am neither of one kind
Dissolving in the splendour of this desolation
The forest has been filled by a fog
Exactly a description of my isolation
I made a note of it in my log
To the secret of all creation
I follow my own trail like a dog

I am a wolf man,
Who walks alone in the gas lamp shadows
of the streets at night
I am a man-wolf upright on two feet in the city,
dressed sombrely as a man,
I am a wolf man
Under skies heavy with snow,
my eyes are convex lenses of ebony,
embedded in amber,
I am a man-wolf
The fat bourgeois and his doppelganger,
are buried in their solid glare
Twin specimens of insect, set for display
I am a wolf-man,
The man in me would kill the wolf
I am a man-wolf,
The wolf in me would eat the man
I am a wolf man,
Who despises the strivings of common men
I am a man-wolf
Who sees them at work,
at their daily tasks at factories and office desk
Who watches them at evening,
elbows lift at tavern tables, heads lolling in song
Und ich weiß nicht was ich sagen soll

I saw a neon sign reflected
in a pool of liquid sky
It was not what I expected,
I was only walking by
The sign said "To the Magic Theatre"
It is not for everyone
It is but for madmen only,
the first performance has begun
I looked up to see that notice
where the lights were shining from
Nothing but blank wall was there
and their reflection too was gone

Maybe it was only an hallucination
I'm no stranger to such things
I made a thorough investigation
The image had a power that clings
To my jaded imagination
My brain has found the bell it rings