And if you gaze long into Abbey Road,
Abbey Road also gazes into you.’

They cross but come back once more,
in the early August morning light,
walking out, not quite in step,
painting colour on black and white.

A photographer perches on his ladder,
sandals lie abandoned on the floor,
a man – with hands on hips – gazes, counts:
one and one and one and one is four.

It would have been easier to let things be,
declare they were already past their prime,
but they want to – they want to so bad –
come together, right now, one last time.

Because the amps are there, they turn them on
and – for a moment – arguments disappear;
there’s something in the way they play,
it seems like years since they’ve been here.

Ringo counts them in, of course,
as the lights and recriminations fade –
one and one and one and one is four –
in this Maida Vale hideaway in the shade.

Some bits are stitched together​
with sun-honeyed harmonies
and fenestrated fragments
of musical mastery –

miserly, mustardy –
under the custody
of polythene dreams,​​
a golden-slumbered tapestry

of rich, interwoven melodies,
snatches, echoes, refrains,
and it carries the weight
(it’s so heavy!)

of where they’ve come from
and where they will go
in the end.

Back outside, we glimpse them through the lens;
four is one and one and one and one.
They walk across the road once more
and then they’re gone.

The Abbess is a pretty nice girl
But she doesn’t have a lot to say.
The Abbess is a pretty nice girl
But all she seems to do is pray.
I want to tell her that I love her a lot
But I gotta drink a bottle of Blue Nun,
The Abbess is a pretty nice girl
One day we’re going to have some fun, oh yeah,
One day we’re going to have some fun.