1. |
||||
|
Well, the video went funny, so I called up my assistant in despair.
She told me not to worry; there was something, maybe static, in the air.
Suddenly the 'phone went dead. I slammed it down and gazed into the street
Where the mob was gathering in mid-November, shirt-sleeved in the heat.
Until now it seemed that hardly anyone believed the end was near -
But I had known for months that there was something wrong outside the atmosphere.
Sick of endless summer with its power failure, illnesses and drought,
The Space Bureau was ransacked and my scientific secret was out.
Sol Nova - and it's all over for Earthlings.
Sol Nova - is it all over for me?
All the people in the know had wisely taken care of Number One -
For only way beyond cold, barren Pluto was there shelter from the sun.
For days and weeks in screaming heat was murder, burning, pillaging and rape.
Still the spaceships were made ready for the few who with me would escape.
Sol Nova - and it's all over for Earthlings.
Sol Nova - is it all over for me?
Outside on the launching pad, I hear the roaring of the hyperdrive,
And if someone doesn't find me soon, I'll lose out on my one chance to survive.
See, in the spaceport penthouse suite, I packed my things, rejoicing in my luck,
But in the lift between the first and second floor, the bloody thing got stuck.
Sol Nova - and it's all over for Earthlings.
Sol Nova - and it's all over for me
|
||||
2. |
||||
|
Purge the words of yearning for true love.
I sang a song of longing for you, love.
Lord, let not the Devil place a curse on her -
And let not me die in pagan Mercia...
Pagan Mercia...
Nobody was certain of our crime, love.
The world must know that Englishmen need time, love.
Yesterday, Christ landed us for sacrifice.
Anyway, without your love, what's paradise?
What's paradise?
Yes, I know they're far from being angels yet.
Angels have no innocence. They have no sex.
Twilight's on the harvest on the Saxon shore -
And as the nights grow longer, love, I want you more.
I want you more.
All the rumours you've been hearing -
Nothing here at all.
Leaden skies, deserted clearings…
The shore's a bastion, the sea's a wall…
A thousand years of tears…
As angels fly away -
And I find my grave in the rolling waves.
I cast aside the dreams of all our wasted hours.
I sailed across the sea to curb the heathen power.
Soon the seasons turn from gold to marble, love.
Soon the wintry sea will freeze the harbour, love.
Freeze the harbour, love.
If doctrines of despair reveal the fall of man,
Let Satan's work begin in this forsaken land.
This ragged earth will hold me in its grave’s grasp, love,
At last, love.
|
||||
3. |
||||
|
Worry, worry, worry -
The cathode pinpoint dies.
Hurry, hurry, hurry -
He drew my blinds; his sunlight dazzled my eyes.
He meddled with dark forces.
He made it bleep and whine
From chimney to transmitter,
On the superheterodyne -
And suddenly from more or less
Nothingness,
It spiralled into life.
Sinking, sinking, sinking
Into the danger zone;
Thinking, thinking, thinking -
From a mere molehill, this Everest has grown.
My heart's a lonely soldier
Lost in inaction,
That morning true love hit me
And put my tongue in traction.
It had to be forbidden then,
Hidden then.
It dare not speak its name.
He left me to a quietude, no more visitations
From a world apart where strangeness spreads
Like smoke from his cigarette.
Its ash and its filter are sacred relics,
Splinters from the True Cross.
Ill fares my island now
In grey eternity.
Like water is the ocean,
That beaming screen is me.
A hermit's tortured rhapsodies,
Their ecstasies -
They rock around the clock.
Grumble, grumble, grumble -
Mumble at the TV
Fumble, fumble, fumble -
I change the station and hope in vain to change me,
Exchange me, age me, derange me, rearrange me, estrange me…
|
||||
4. |
||||
|
When the west wind wails across the Westarweg
And the raven wings down the Humber,
Fear stirs in the strongest hearts.
The land becomes a harbour
For Hardrada!
The king must awaken the housecarls,
The ealdormen and the aethelings.
Have the Witanagemot taken the fyrd and fled
From Hardrada?
This could be the end - such a lust for battle.
Do Christ and his saints sleep forever today?
Who cares what may happen to you?
Down the antique streets of Asia Minor
To the woodland wilds of the Wineland,
None can slow their ardour.
The known world knows the Northmen
Of Hardrada!
Count your futile fallen - fools and martyrs with them;
Valhalla awaits you in battle today.
Who cares what may happen to you?
From fjordic fastnesses were fashioned sea dragons
That to the saga gave birth.
Each continent and coral reef knows that all the world
Swivels on the axis of the Northmen.
Taste the thin-lipped axes of the Northmen!
And it would not slander Alexander
Or even Caesar's legions.
On land and sea resourceful
To give the law its force -
The Danelaw!
Feed the ravens corpses - muster up your forces.
Let Christ and his saints sleep forever and a day!
Who cares what may happen to you?
|
||||
5. |
||||
|
I sailed the seven seas for treasure islands
That would somehow take me nearer the public heart.
I have sailed more miles than the kittiwake flies.
I'm tantalized, but I've tried too hard
For something a mere fraction out of reach.
Heave her high on the anchor chain
With a running bowline, sailor.
Hoist her high, hoist her dry.
Sailor, rock and roll me over!
I'll aim my merchant clipper for north-west China
If the pilot gets us past the harbour's mouth -
But when the ship's becalmed and the sail is slack,
And the crew is crippled with the Yellow Jack,
There's not much you can do to comfort me.
Heave her high on the anchor chain
With a running bowline, sailor.
Hoist her high, hoist her dry.
Sailor, rock and roll me over!
Over and over and over again, it's still an unchanged game.
A fixed idea possessing me, it's always been the same.
There's a good stiff breeze for the north-west passage to China
That may lead me to the worst of dreams come true -
But when the wind is high and it's raining too,
Then any old port in a storm will do
Till one strange day I throw the anchor down.
Heave her high on the anchor chain
With a running bowline, sailor.
Hoist her high, hoist her dry.
Sailor, rock and roll me over!
|
||||
6. |
||||
|
Eleanor, oh Eleanor
Will you return from bondage drear?
I'll be your troubadour forever.
You work too much and you try too hard,
And each and every day your strength grows less.
You talk so much and you drop your guard.
Tomorrow always ends up as a guess.
Eleanor, oh Eleanor
Will you return from bondage drear?
I'll be your troubadour forever.
You hardly know that I exist,
Though I'm your only hope.
You saw me crane my neck inside
A faceless crowd of people.
It's far too much - in fact, impossible
To hold you here in my arms,
But all my dreams would be realised
In the presence, dear, of your... precious charms.
No lance for me, no horse to ride,
No dragon that this modern world would know -
I'll wait until someone else decides
How soon or not your husband lets you go.
Eleanor, oh Eleanor
Will you return from bondage drear?
I'll be your troubadour forever, yeah.
Eleanor, oh, Eleanor
Will you return from bondage drear?
I will wait for you forever.
|
||||
7. |
||||
|
Back in the forest primaeval,
She'd heard about trash like us.
She'd seen us fighting drunk
Or in the long grass round the churchyard -
But into that mocking arena,
She came to dance with the diddikois.
Rebel rocker, rebel rocker,
Your dad don't like me,
But I don't care.
See you Friday down the café,
My little rebel rocker, yeah?
She was a high school commanchero.
She never really got the point.
She aspired to a Hell's Angel wedding
With a motor-bike manual for a Bible.
She mothballed her spurs and her jodhpurs
To join the night café biker girls.
Rebel rocker, rebel rocker,
Your dad's a vicar,
But I don't care.
See you Friday down the café,
My little rebel rocker, yeah?
One day, we change into people
Who can't dance the Madison -
But in the roaring years when I loved her,
She didn't give a tinker's cuss
Yet she married some bloke called Tony
When all the bikes ran out of petrol -
But back in the forest primaeval,
She used to dance with the diddikois.
Rebel rocker, rebel rocker,
I'm broken-hearted,
But you don't care.
Missed you Friday down the café,
My little rebel rocker, yeah.
|
||||
8. |
||||
|
Run, Kalwinder.
Kalwinder, don't you cry.
Into a void, we've gone;
So long, Kalwinder. Goodbye.
Once, when we were young, we were so in love.
I raised you above the highest rung
When we were young.
Then to have and to hold, I stood at your side
Till my love went cold and death closed my eyes -
When I was old, Kalwinder.
Run, Kalwinder.
Kalwinder, don't you cry.
Into a void, we've gone;
So long, Kalwinder. Goodbye.
So I made you rich; the world was your friend -
But good times like this must come to an end
Like you and me, Kalwinder.
Run, Kalwinder.
Kalwinder, don't you cry.
Into a void, we've gone;
So long, Kalwinder. Goodbye.
Down, down by the riverside, she runs to wash her cares away;
Kalwinder, now I've lost her, but I could find no other way.
Now you curtsey and bow, and you call me 'sir',
And this makes me sad for what we once had,
And all we were, Kalwinder
Run, Kalwinder.
Kalwinder, don't you cry.
Into a void, we've gone;
So long, Kalwinder. Goodbye.
|
||||
9. |
||||
|
I cover the waterfront;
I watch the cold, grey sea,
Down by the waterfront
Though it's no good for me.
At the end of the working day,
Dawn seems a year away.
I cover the waterfront for you.
I cover the waterfront
In the department store,
Doing some overtime
When the customers close the door.
The wee small hours may chime,
Still I will walk the floor,
Doing some overtime for you.
So I work late or try to sleep,
And hurry each weekend through.
When I walk that lonely beach,
I realize there's nothing else for me to do.
I cover the waterfront
Where we were on holiday.
Down by the waterfront,
I saw you slip away.
Gone for a week or two,
The newspapers searched for you.
They covered the waterfront for you.
In the eyes of the harbour police,
It was a routine job and nothing new
When something washed up on the beach -
And no-one was sure it was you.
I cover the waterfront
Whenever the tide is low
Because there's room for doubt -
And because I love you so.
Over a year has passed
Since the day that I saw you last.
I cover the waterfront for you.
|
||||
10. |
Heedless Child
02:33
|
|||
|
And when you wave and walk away,
How will those first moments be
As you edge nearer to the day
When I'm no more than a memory?
If I'm second fiddle or not even that,
I'm still very glad to be in your band -
Counting out bar after bar, a triangle in my hand.
Joking aside, let me stay in your life
As you always will in mine.
When your own offspring grow up too,
You won't doubt
What I'm talking about
When they say goodbye to you
Like they have to do -
And not turn around
To take one last look,
Then close the book
And leave you feeling blue.
If I was a hero in the wildwood,
I'll remain a distant friend -
But when you fade from your boyhood
Please forgive my need,
The need of a rag doll
For a heedless child.
|
||||
11. |
Days In Old Rotterdam
02:53
|
|||
|
Down in the back streets,
The back streets so mean,
There is Crioda who's only fifteen.
Though she is mine, she won't know who I am -
Down in the back streets,
The back streets of old Rotterdam.
I was recalled to Holland on pretexts so vague
For a touch of diplomacy out in the Hague.
I dry-cleaned my suit and I processed my smile,
And spent days counting paperclips into a file.
Does your mother wonder what happened to me
When I joined the Luftwaffe in '43?
When caught in a Gaffelstraat small-death romance,
The army invaded and smashed into France.
‘O where, tell me where is my father?’, you cry,
And I hope that your mother will tell this sweet lie:
That in all of this world, there's none to compare
To your poor father who died in the war.
The conference ended a few days too soon
So I ordered my breakfast for late afternoon.
I bothered room-service to call up my wife -
Leaving you and your mother as ships in the night.
Down in the back streets,
The back streets so mean,
There is Crioda who's only fifteen.
Though she is mine, she won't know who I am,
Down in the back streets,
The back streets of old Rotterdam.
|
||||
12. |
||||
|
Awake, my lord, and leave all meaner joys
To musicians, bards and their parasite boys.
Venus calls you; her voice obey.
In her fair arms spend night and day.
In the Inner Temple in a cell divine,
You can lay your lover in peace sublime.
John Wilkes, take your last chance tonight.
Under the moon, oh mother, make my bed soon.
The old devil always plays the best tune.
It's Hellfire Francis, Prince of Darkness,
Guard of the inverted cross.
Mother Sulphur balances and makes accounts fair
For all the young novices under her care.
John Wilkes, take your last chance tonight.
That's how the nun watched the signals and had for her pains
The abbot's playthings and other small gains.
Belladonna, mandrake and hemlock cloud
The air of the room with the lights turned down.
Lastly, they ravished fresh maidens so fair.
The noise of their revelry rent the night air.
John Wilkes, take your last chance tonight.
Was that a soixante-neuf or was it forty-five?
No lovers left alive. The Frenchman changes sides.
Orgies were a pleasure; politics a crime.
Nothing was really a pastime.
The grasp divine, the thrilling squeeze,
The Garden of Lust, the Temple of Ease,
The panting breasts and the parting knees -
How can you refuse when they offer these?
John Wilkes, take your last chance tonight.
Johnny, be good tonight.
|
||||
13. |
The Moonlight Skater
04:40
|
|||
|
Within the trees in winter's grasp,
Beneath the chamber of the moon,
From the dark edge of a lake
Came a solitary skater.
The Earth lay still. No tawny cloud
Could mar the brightness of the stars
Nor the shaft of distant light
That shimmered from my lonely window.
Between the shoreline and the hills
Was but the silence of the snow.
Let it ease my restless soul
As I wander from the doorway.
Throughout this marble arcady,
No wolf is howling for its prey.
No fox or owl can lift the ear
From the sound of whirling circles.
And a nightingale sang ti-ra-li-ra
In a cool summer sky
When our love was true and ageless.
The skater's claimed back by the shades
Of all the pain that ever was -
Every sadness in the world
That we found on leaving Eden.
So silver mists of ancient night
Stray from an eyrie in the fells.
The woodland slumbers in their arms
Till daybreak pierces the blackest shadow.
|
||||
14. |
||||
|
Scum rises to the surface without thinking it,
Twists his face into a frown when he's sinking it
In the mineshaft of an iron dream.
He never was too hindered by reality.
It's easier to block it out with fantasy,
Variations on a nameless theme -
That endless, changeless theme
Of how the story could have been.
Now Johnny's on the run from everyone
But no-one's looking for Johnny.
He didn't know how bad it was to live there
With yet nothing to compare it to or somewhere
That would claim him but let him run.
Specific incidents won't stand up to a retell.
There's no need to go into distressing detail
About Johnny raving on
As in one leap he was gone.
Into oblivion.
Now Johnny's on the run from everyone
But no-one's looking for Johnny.
Runaway...very, very suddenly and violently…
Runaway...coincidence contrary to blind chance.
Runaway...slip smoothly from the circumstance so silently...
Runaway...the speed of it has put him in a trance.
The pageant of the dawn's recrimination,
No sunshine on a shocking situation -
And the last place where the black sheep stray...
Shingle seethes and jingles on the beaches,
Sleet-lashed in the land's most distant reaches -
That's where Johnny holds his sway
Till the stark light fades away,
And the dark comes freezing down
Like doomsday…
Runaway...melodrama panorama in the sand dunes...
Runaway...stones condemned to years beneath the deep.
Runaway...his carrier bag escapes and wraiths the half-moon.
Runaway...slipping into his uneasy sleep…
Well, the tide comes in tonight
And Johnny's out of sight.
He's been on the run from everyone.
But no-one's looking for Johnny.
|
||||
15. |
Forest De Winter Kit-Kat
03:43
|
|||
|
I look into winter, faraway, faraway;
Look into winter now summer's long gone.
I look into winter now faraway summer is lost.
Gold hadn't turned into marble before
I discovered I talk to myself:
Unstructured reflections from too long ago
That matter to nobody else.
I look into winter, faraway, faraway;
Look into winter now summer's long gone.
I look into winter now faraway summer is lost.
Hand in hand in the mist of the ruins were we
On that eschatological day.
In the midst of our courtship, the planet was young.
Sweethearts are selfish that way.
I look into midnight once faraway, faraway;
Look into midnight now evening is nigh.
I look into midnight now faraway daybreak is lost.
Do I embrace the darkness or shun its caress -
Though death will always find me?
Out on the road in the throes of mad youth
Before it got tangled and torn -
I know what broke up that old gang of mine:
A twilight that felt like a dawn.
I look into winter once far-faraway
When looking back at what so opened my heart.
I look into winter now faraway summer is past.
I look into winter once faraway, faraway.
Look into winter now summer's long gone.
I look into winter now faraway summer is lost.
Time falls from my fingers like leaves to the ground
That turn to earth eternal.
|
||||
16. |
The Last Show On Earth
03:45
|
|||
|
David, oh David, hang onto that daydream,
Hang onto that daydream if it meant so much
That centuries fade and some smile and remember
The man who was Screaming Lord Sutch
It was your day that day, the last show on Earth -
But a black carnival shall continue
For those who weren't there for that final performance,
The only one left in you.
You'd identify awe in the constituency
When counter assistants went coy -
But they'll think of you less in the junk shops and cafés
Where you were still a boy.
No-one else listened to that dark escort's whisper.
Your mind slipped away from the outrage
When fortune failed slowly, you heard your own footsteps
Walk off the stage.
Cameo? Therapy? Some kind of hell?
The dressing room was one more cold dungeon cell.
The spotlight, it felt bloody warm on your face
In 'Jack The Ripper' during the chase -
And a solitary mister,
Paid off and gone,
You wondered if you
Had already passed on!
A newsreader's footnote, the punch-line unspoken,
Transmitting your funeral knell,
Still keeping the faith, you'd packed up and checked out
Of Heartbreak Hotel.
David, oh David, hang onto that daydream,
Hang onto that daydream if it meant so much.
Though centuries fade, there'll be some who remember
That tears fell for Screaming Lord Sutch,
The man who was Screaming Lord Sutch.
|
||||
17. |
||||
|
You left her on two wings and a prayer.
You scrambled away into thin air
Into that endless blue
To die in World War Two,
Never to return again.
The aerodrome's run down and out of use.
Your fascist queen still hangs around for you;
With every passing plane,
Whispering your name
While you remain in the cold Aryan tomb.
Superman,
No future can
Make you return to Germany.
You could return my reason to me,
Watching the sky for my love.
You walked out of that door in '44,
But were you still alive in '45?
Were you shot down in a dog-fight
For the glory of the Third Reich?
I'd wait a thousand years until I know.
Superman,
No future can change you
Who said no farewell in '43.
Did you die in the sky for Germany?
How could you do this to me?
Superman,
No future can change you.
There is no work for the Luftwaffe to do.
Why won't they make a civilian of you?
Who can control you from the grave?
If you would return, my soul would be saved.
Superman, you've been flying far too long.
What a difference a decade made
From the hour that it began -
The strange landscapes of the mountain…
Nothing can be quite what it seems.
Let's not be beastly to the Germans
At the Treaty of Versailles.
Who were the mothers of Dada
Way back in 1916?
It's said I know no good or evil,
A sentry skilful on land and sea.
How I reversed all their allied values
Since the crime that set me free!
Now praised and magnified for ever,
A strong man with an iron heart -
A snake-eye cropped up for the first time
Since that long, transfigured night.
From the sunny Spanish marches
To the freezing Arctic sea,
How I wasted all the nations
Lost and found for Germany!
My gun is loaded for the last time.
I've gone from the sight of man;
Caesar's crown the greatest poison
Ever since the world began.
When I gaze into your blue eyes,
All I see is myself.
|
||||
18. |
||||
|
Young man held for questioning -
No Fleet Street affair,
Mother way past worrying,
Father old and square.
He's martyred like St. Stephen
As he drags upon a Winston
In young England.
Chase ideas in the wilderness,
Starve and plot and scheme -
Part of someone's masterplan;
Someone's wildest dream.
Who'll harness the frustration
Where disaffection festers
In Young England?
Bold young brutes with angel faces -
Help is always near.
The eastern world, it is exploding,
But it can't happen here.
Blitzkrieg unexpectedly
When the sky is blue -
Nacht und nebel, third degree
Searchlight shine on you
And though the war continues,
There lives a restless nation
In Young England.
Streets full of bravado,
And times are getting harder
In Young England
|
||||
19. |
||||
|
You caught my eye like a magnet,
Someone alone like me
From unspeakable land to unspeakable language.
That was the day two castaways came together
Forever
Though we'll never
Live in legends where the rainbow ends -
Except in dreams of longing for our homeland.
The sky above is as cloudy
As the earth beneath is cold -
And we're no longer quite such rootless changelings.
Strange that we should be fading into age
As the changeless
And the changed
Where we've delved as deep as a monkfish could sleep,
Deep enough to lose sight of our homeland.
Suddenly, the flood plain of the city
Had slip-slapped with blood and fire.
The power swept my love and I downtown
To the sound of countdowns to the hour:
3-2-1-zero hour.
We fled as far as the most distant star
Caught in the branches of the trees in our homeland.
Suddenly, like human moles,
Bed down on subway grime -
Dingy hoardings exhorting Strength Through Joy
When girls and boys were running out of time:
5-4-3-2-1.
Children have brought us contentment.
Children have made us less sad.
Otherwise children just bind us to our exile.
Will children make us less lonely if they cry
When we die?
When we die,
Will we climb as high as an eagle could fly,
High enough to spy our homeland?
|
||||
20. |
This Time Tomorrow
02:57
|
|||
|
The day is dead and all’s been said.
The fire’s down to ember.
In fading light, the night ignites.
The old inferno burns and I remember…
If I could, I’d return to the crossroads
When dread defers to longing for
Times forever furious with feeling.
If I could, I’d recapture the rapture
Of the ideas that he had.
My younger self heeds not what I could tell him.
Right now I’d blast his brainstorms out
(Get with it. You gotta get with it)
But would I tame his game this time tomorrow?
Whatever next? Shall I take up golf
When the season’s dry and warm
Or start sending socks to fishermen in a snowstorm?
For my rooftop’s slate was slashed with snow
When certain sure that I could go
To the over-sixties sessions at the swimming pool
Where the shallows speak of numbered days
Since surcease from their labour pains:
Neighbourhood armistice with eternity.
A map of maps and facts on facts,
(Get with it. You gotta get with it)
Will there be talk of talk this time tomorrow?
Who’s that stranger in the mirror now?
(Get with it. You gotta get with it)
Will he be when I look this time tomorrow?
He lives in cardboard folios
Of cuttings that I kept
From when trash was a newsflash across the world.
Sending socks to fishermen!
(Get with it. You gotta get with it)
(Get with it. You gotta get with it)
(Get with it.)
|
||||
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