Van Der Graaf Generator

Day dawns dark, it now numbers infinity.
Life crawls from the past, watching in wonder
I trace its patterns in me.
Tomorrow's tomorrow is birth again.
Boats burn the bridge in the fens;
the time of the past returns to my life
and uses it.

Don't blame me for the letters
that may form in the sand;
don't look in my eyes, you may see all the numbers
that stretch in my sky and colour my hand.
Don't say that I'm wrong in imagining
that the voice of my life cannot sing.
Fate enters and talks in old words:
They amuse it.

The hands shine darkly and white:
only in dark they appear.
Bless the baby born today,
flying in pitch, flying on fear.

They shine in my eyes and touch my face
where I have seen them placed before;
don't blame me, please, for the fate that falls:
I did not choose it.
I did not, no no, I did not
I truly did not choose it.

He's a blind man, crouching by the pavement,
only seeing with his third eye,
and clutching at the astral shadow
of every passer-by.

He's a wise man, trumping all the answers;
she's a wild girl, trying to keep his feet on the floor
in whispered physical litanies:

So you live in the bottom of the sea,
and you kill all that come near you ....
but you are very lonely,
because all the other fish
fear you .....
And you crave companionship
and someone to call your own;
because for the whole of your life
you've been living alone.

On a black day in black month
at the black bottom of the sea,
Your mother gave birth to you and died
immediately ....
'Cos you can't have two killers
living in the same pad
and when your mother knew
that her time had come
she was really rather glad.

Death in the sea, death in the sea,
somebody please come and help me,
come and help me
Fishes can't fly,
fishes can't fly,
Fishes can't and neither can I,
neither can I ....

Now I'm really rather like you,
for I've killed all the love I ever had
by not doing all I ought to
and by leaving my mind coming
bad.
And I too am a killer,
for emotion runs as deep as flesh
and I too am so lonely,
and I wish that I could forget
We need love,
We need love,
We need love ..........

Pretty keen - yes, my hobby keeps me busy
and if I talk to myself, what's the crime?
In the darkroom I am a dealer in space and time....
When all memory is mellowed,
when the photograph is yellowed,
still it never lies.

There you are, your eyes laced with secret pleasure,
saying that you're on the way to change,
devouring in inordinate measure
every diversion that's arranged.
For every appetite, a cruel attraction,
but there's a panic in your actions...
oh, I never saw you look so strange.

Fixing memory chemically,
holding time on the stop-clock,
hanging back from that last frame
just in case it didn't show you
in the way I used to know you...
I thought you'd always stay the same.
(But you won't.)

Oh, the red light, the silver, the black and the bromide;
the silence, the waiting for overview....
The past seems under-exposed, low tide,
but still the images ghost through.
And you're there in the bath,
which is all this has led to,
and I can't say your path
is a right one to choose....

But then I only have a negative of you.

The killer lives inside me: yes,
I can feel him move.
Sometimes he's lightly sleeping
in the quiet of his room
but then his eyes
will rise and stare through mine;
he'll speak my words and slice my mind inside...
Yes the killer lives.

The angels live inside me
I can feel them smile.
Their presence strokes
and soothes the tempest in my mind;
And their love
can heal the wounds that I have wrought,
They watch me as I go to fall - well,
I know I shall be caught
While the angels live.

How can I be free?
How can I get help?
Am I really me?
Am I someone else?

But stalking in my cloisters
hang the acolytes of gloom
and Death's Head throws his cloak
into the corner of my room
and I am doomed
But laughing in my courtyard
play the pranksters of my youth
and solemn, waiting old man
in the gables of the roof -
he tells me truth...

I, too, live inside me
and very often don't know who I am
I know I'm not a hero well,
I hope that I'm not damned.
I'm just a man
and killers, angels, all are these
Dictators, saviours,
refugees in war and peace
as long as man lives...

I'm just a man
and killers, angels, all are these:
Dictators,
Saviours,
Refugees.

If I'm the mirror and you're the image
then what's the secret between the two,
these 'me's and 'you's, how many can there be?
Oh, I don't mind all that around the place,
as long as you keep it
well away from me.

I've begun to regret that we ever met
between the dimensions.
It gets such a strain to pretend that the change
is anything but cheap...
with your infant pique and your angst pretensions
sometimes you act like a creep.

And now I'm standing in the corner,
looking at the room and the furniture
in cheap imitation of alienation and grief.
And now we're going to the kitchen,
fix ourselves a drink and a cigarette,
getting no closer to being the joker or thief.

Still, I reflect, this nervous wreck
who stands before me can see as well,
can surely tell that he's not yet free;
he can turn aside, but can no more ignore me
than know which one of us is he,
than tell what we are going to be,
than know which one of is me.

And now we're going to the kitchen,
fix ourselves a drink and a cigarette,
getting no closer to being the joker or thief.

These mirror images,
these mirror images
won't stay, go away, are no help.

In these mirror images of myself
there are no secrets.