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.

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 ..........

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.

North was somewhere years ago and cold:
Ice locked the people's hearts and made them old.
South was birth to pleasant lands, but dry
I walked the waters' depths and played my mind.
East was dawn, coming alive in the golden sun
the winds came, gently, several heads became one
in the summertime, though august people sneered
we were at peace, and we cheered.

We walked alone, sometimes hand in hand,
between the thin lines marking sea and sand;
smiling very peacefully,
we began to notice that we could be free,
and we moved together to the West.

West is where all days will someday end;
where the colours turn from grey to gold,
and you can be with the friends.
And light flakes the golden clouds above all
West is Mike and Susie,
West is where I love.

There we shall spend our final days of our lives
tell the same old stories
yeah well, at least we tried.
Into the West, smiles on our faces, we'll go;
oh, yes, and our apologies to those
who'll never really know the way.

We're refugees, walking away from the life
that we've known and loved;
nothing to do or say, nowhere to stay
now we are alone.
We're refugees, carrying all we own
in brown bags, tied up with string;
nothing to think, it doesn't mean a thing,
but we'll be happy on our own.
West is Mike and Susie
West is where I love,
West is refugees' home.

Citadel rever berates to a thousand voices,
now dumb;
What have we become?
What have we chosen to be?
Now all history is reduced to the syllables
or our name -
nothing can ever be the same:
now the Immortals are here.
At the time it seemed a reasonable course
to harness all the force
of life without the threat of death, but
soon we found that boredom and inertia
are not negative, but all the law we know,
and dead are will and words like survival
Arrival at immunity from all age, all fear
and all end...
why do I pretend?
Our essence is distilled
and all familiar taste is now drained
and though purity is maintained
it leaves us sterile, living through the
millions of years,
a laugh as close as any tear;
living, if you claim that all
that entails is breathing, eating,
defacating, screwing, drinking, spewing,
sleeping, sinking ever down and down
and ultimately passing away time which
no longer has any meaning.

Take away the threat of death and all
you're left with is a round
if make-believe.
Marshall every sullen breath and though
you're ultimately bored by endless ectasy
it's still the ring by which you hope to be
engaged
to marry the girl who will give you
forever - it's crazy and plainly
that simply is not enough.

What is this dulles and bluntest of pains,
such that my eyes never close without
feeling it there?
What abject despair demands an end to
all things of infinity?
If we have gained, how do we now meet
the cost?
What have we bargained, and what have
we lost?
What have we relinquished, never
knowing it was thee?

What thoughts now of holding fast the
line, defying death and time?
Everything we had is gone,
everything we laboured for and favoured
more that earthly things reveals
the hollow ring of false hope and
false deliverance.

But now the nuptial bed is made, the
dowry has been paid:
the toothless, haggard features of eternity
now welcome me between the sheets
to couple with her withered body -
my wife.
Hers forever,
hers forever,
hers forever,
in still life

I remember what it felt like at
seventeen:
I was a cat, a snake, a lizard, a mouse.
Still got an interest in the limousine
and a spouse and a brat,
country house, London flat.

I'm gonna head for the island when
the summer's out,
I'm gonna do all the stuff that I can,
drink like a fish in a waterspout -
I'm a fan of the flow
it began long ago
I'm a man who should know
it doesn't stop.

There's so much to remember,
so much to forget:
we're all in the possession of the
future tense, but don't know it yet.
The flesh comes through the spirit,
the spirit through the flesh...
we look the Sphinx in the face
for answers and of course we're
really not impressed.
We're caught between age and beauty,
experience and youth
so we feel the need acutely
for any kind of Truth.

Oh but we get copped some days,
caught between options we've failed
to play, such wasted chance.
So I join the wastrel's dance:
it has slow as well as fast movement
and any change must be an
improvement on simply fossilising,
standing still.

I got a steady vocation for
the Quiet Zone,
I just can't wait for the song to be sung,
I'm still possessed by the promise
of the Pleasure Dome

You're so young,
so oldd,
such a drag
to be told.

You're so here, so gone,
so near, so wrong,
so queer, so strong


Such a drag to be told....

Slow motion in the quiet of your room:
so potent is the smell of her perfume
that you think she's eternal
that you think she's everything
-but no-one knows what she is....
Repentance for all you should have said-
her entrance seems to raise you from the dead
and you think she's really with you
and you think she'll always stay.
always ready to forgive you,
always ready to grant you her mercy
-but in her own way.
When she comes she'll be a stranger;
struck dumb you'll try to protest
as the drum beats out the danger,
too late-you should have noticed
that the lady with her skin so white
like something out of Blake or Burne-Jones
always blocked out the light
and shadowed all you owned.

Still you think she's forever,
yesterday and tomorrow
-but no-one knows where she is.
Still you swear that you can win her
and your prayer is that she'll want you;
aware, once a saint, now you're a sinner
and your sins are going to haunt you
when the lady with her skin so white
like something out of Edgar Allen Poe
holds your hand so tight
and you hope that she'll never let go.

Easy targets, easy cross-words, easy life:
these key margins leave you balanced on the knife,
bleeding darkly. In the end it all comes down
to sleazy bargains.
That hidden key-you tried so hard to find it:
all you can concieve is the effort to be worthy.
Even now you need to be reminded
that La Belle Dame is without mercy.
The lady with her skin so white
-you never did quite catch her name-
now she holds you in the night
and she'll never let go again
she'll never let go again