Up on the white veranda, she wears a necktie and a Panama hat,
Her passport shows a face from another time and place, she looks a-nothing like that,
And all of the remnants of her recent past are scattered in the wild wind.
She walks across the marble floor where a voice from the gambling room is calling her to come on in,
She smiles, walks the other way
As the last ship sails and the moon fades away from Black Diamond Bay.
As the morning light breaks open, the Greek comes down and he asks for rope and a pen that will write.
"Pardon, monsieur," the desk clerk says, carefully removes his fez, "am I hearing you right?"
And, as the yellow fog is lifting, the Greek is quickly heading for the second floor,
She passes him on the spiral staircase, thinking he's the Soviet Ambassador.
She starts to speak, but he walks away
As the storm clouds rise and the palm branches sway on Black Diamond Bay.
A soldier sits beneath the fan, doing business a-with a tiny man, who sells him a ring,
Lightning strikes, the lights blow out, the desk clerk wakes, he begins to shout, "Can you see anything?"
Then the Greek appears on the second floor in his bare feet with a rope around his neck
While a loser in the gambling room lights up a candle, says, "Open up another deck",
But the dealer says, "Attendez-vous, s'il vous plaît"
1,
As the rain beats down and the cranes fly away from Black Diamond Bay.
The desk clerk heard the woman laugh as he looked around in the aftermath and the soldier got tough,
He tried to grab the woman's hand, said, "Here's a ring, it cost a grand!" She said, "That ain't enough."
Then she ran upstairs to pack her bags while a horse-drawn taxi waited at the curb,
She passed the door where the Greek had locked where a handwritten sign read a-"Do Not Disturb".
She knocked upon it anyway
As the sun went down and the music did play on Black Diamond Bay.
"I've got to talk to someone quick!" But the Greek said, "Go away!", and he kicked the chair to the floor.
He hung there from the chandelier, she cried, "Help, there's danger near, please a-open up a-the door!"
Then the volcano erupted and the lava flowed down from the mountain high above,
The soldier and the tiny man were crouched in the corner thinking of forbidden love,
The desk clerk said, "It happens every day",
As the stars fell down and the moons fade away
2 on Black Diamond Bay.
As the island slowly sank, the loser finally broke the bank in the gambling room.
The dealer said, "It's too late now, you can take your money, but I don't know how you'll spend it in the tomb."
The tiny man bit the soldier's ear as the floor caved in and the boiler in the basement blew,
While she's out on the balcony where a stranger tells her, "My darling, je vous aime beaucoup."
3
She sheds a tear and then begins to pray
As the sun burns on and the smoke drifts away from Black Diamond Bay.
I was sitting home alone one night in L.A., watching old Cronkite on the seven o'clock news,
It seems there was an earthquake that left nothing but a Panama hat and a pair of old Greek shoes.
It didn't seem like much was happening, so I turned it off and went to grab another beer,
Seem like every time you turn around there's another hard-luck story that you're gonna hear
And there's really nothing anyone can say –
And I never did plan to go anyway to Black Diamond Bay.
1
Translation of the French: "Wait, please".
2
Other lyrics sources present an alternate (but obviously incorrect) lyric here: "As the starts fell down and the fields burned away".
3
Translation of the French: "I love you a lot". This is a reference to a popular song written by Anna Sosenko in 1935 called "Darling, Je Vous Aime Beaucoup", which, although grammatically correct, is a deliberate attempt at bad French.