Ca Ira: Opera in Three Acts: The Fugitive King

And high above,
Homing in the restless sky,
Rooks, melancholy, proclaim a schism between
God, sacred, and the Crown, profane
Between the heavens and the King
The dark horizon cracks a crooked grin,
Admitting one small grain of change
Then two, then four, then bit by bit,
Then tock by tick
All the old presumptions hove in rings
The King is afraid that his kingdom is slipping away
The Queen pines for the good times at Versailles
He works on his locks to the sound of the ticking of clocks
The children play in a garden that’s ringed with steel
They wanted to visit St. Cloud to be able to
Breathe in the air
The National Guard forbad them to leave