Thin Air
Your Face on the Street
Stumbled
Wrong Way Round
Ghosts of Planes
If We Must Part Like This
Undone
Diminished
The Top of the World Club
What I once thought was everlasting
all of a sudden been and gone.
It is finished, it is finished but mercy’s moving us along.
What can you carry for your brother
when you can’t stand up on your own?
It’s hard to keep up, it’s hard to keep up,
this part you have to do alone.
Each time you make a resolution (I get no sense
who knows what lies in your intent. of what you meant to say
There goes the story, there goes the story by way of a defence.)
here comes the circular descent.
If I say “good night and god bless”
I might yet confess I’m hoping to see
that when daylight breaks
I will face a fait accompli.
When the time comes I hope I’ll say
this is the moment I must stay
my hand in mercy.
I don’t intend to let you go,
I never meant to leave you lonely.
This is the moment I must show
my hand in mercy.
What I perceived as everlasting (I might be wrong...
now I just see as overlong. you still belong among those
Beyond endurance, beyond endurance, hungry to press on.)
beyond this point you can’t carry on.
But I believe what someone told me:
when we are pushed right to the edge,
right to the limit, when it is finished
it is the mercy.
So I say “Good night and god bless, sleep tight”.
Counting sheep and closing my eyes
I will drift away from the livelong day,
up the wooden hill slowly climb.
So I say “Good night and god bless, sleep tight”.
I must go outside and I might be some time.
I’d see your face on the street
often times as I went on my day to day.
We were never to meet
but a nodding acquaintance had come our way.
I never paid it much mind,
always assumed I’d continue to see you there.
But of the mysteries behind,
all the shadows before us we’re unaware.
Don’t swim out too far, for Christ’s sake
don’t go in the bar, for Christ’s sake
don’t get in the car....
My heart skipped a beat Don’t let down your guard,
when I chanced on a headline that featured you. don’t swim out too far,
And here’s your face on the street, don’t go in the bar,
on a poster appealing for any clue.... don’t get in the car....
You let down your guard for Christ’s sake,
You went in the bar for Christ’s sake,
You got in the car for Christ’s sake.
What happened? You swam out too far for Christ’s sake,
Where’d it go wrong? you went in the bar for Christ’s sake,
You’re there one moment, you got in the car....
the next you’re gone.
I see your face on the street now
as a ghost apparition, you’ll not come home.
So much in life’s incomplete -
somehow in your disappearance I felt my own.
You swam out too far for comfort
you let down your guard forever,
What happened? you went in the bar, for Christ’s sake,
Where’d it go wrong? you got in the car for Christ’s sake,
You’re there one moment you let down your guard forever,
and there you’re gone, you let down your guard.
gone forever just like that
and all the future’s fallen flat.
Wash your hands clean,
don’t let anybody see the dirty work.
Keep those secrets
locked away from sight forever,
hidden safely where your darker side still runs berserk.
So much stored-up resentment,
all that background fallout from so long ago,
it’s still here to haunt you.
In a trunk locked in the attic
are the clothes that dressed the actions
you discarded but you can’t outgrow.
There’s a false wall in the basement
where you hide away the history you dare not put on show.
And when the hammer hits the nail upon the thumb
then the unvarnished truth is what you stumble on.
On your best behaviour,
keep on playing out the lily-white,
but you’ll always be stuck there,
going round and round in circles,
the mistakes which you repeat form up the framework
which defines your life.
You couldn’t quantify the depths you’d have to plumb
or the damage you’ve collaterally done...
still your own footprints are the tracks you stumble on.
And it’s less by design than by random occurrence
that you filled up your time, that you built up the current
to spark the life you’ve led, the person you’ve become.
With the end in sight the excuses are all gone.
The truth is, this conclusion’s what you’ve stumbled on:
behind you lies the wreckage that you’ve stumbled from.
Instrumental
The air is thin, the air is thin,
the Top of the World Club’s what we’re in.
How thin the air, how thin the air,
the Top of the World Club isn’t there.
With easy grace they crawl
across the shadow-shifting city sky,
an aerial flotilla,
the ghosts of planes pass by.
Their gravid bellies bursting,
gravity distended out of shape;
from the consequence of action
history offers no escape.
Arrival and departure,
all points in between now coincide.
Here’s a ticket to oblivion.
Onward passage is denied.
The air is thin, the air is thin,
the Top of the World Club’s what we’re in.
How thin the air, how thin the air,
the Top of the World Club isn’t there any more.
Already there’s no case for special pleading,
no points to score, no blow by blow.
I look around the room that we’ll be leaving.
Even while you’re here beside me I already know
I miss you so.
How soon we make our move towards hereafter
where we will reap what has been sown.
A shadow chills the music, stills the laughter.
Promise that you’ll stay forever, say you’ll never go.
I miss you so.
I turn my eyes, stare into the distance,
the light that dies, the door that’s closed.
No last goodbye, if we must part like this
I miss you so.
I feel so strange and restless, dislocated,
I’m homesick even though I’m here at home.
Nostalgic for the future, I have waited...
my shaking hands, the lump that’s in my throat.
Even while I’m here beside you
I still miss you so.
And it’s too late to make it any different;
the wave that breaks, the tide that flows
outrageous fate is tearing us apart -
I miss you so.
I turn my eyes, stare into the distance.
The light that dies, the door that’s closed.
No last goodbye, if we must part like this
I miss you so, so much.
It won’t make any difference
to say how much it hurts, I know.
No last goodbye, if we must part like this,
I miss you so,
I miss you so,
I miss you so.
I mark the high days and the holidays
red-letter on the page;
fast-forward into memory,
prepare to be upstaged.
The envelopes I push against
so rapidly become
a wrap to keep me safe and warm
but soon enough I’ll be undone.
And if, for instance, I had spent a lifetime
in the service of cleanliness and godliness
I’d still be washed up now.
My history doesn’t make much sense,
no corner has been turned.
The future's brooding and immense
and everything I’ve learned
seems tiny in the scheme of things,
the reckoning’s begun -
I hold together what I can,
the stitches bound to come undone.
And, for example, if I’d spent a lifetime
in pursuit of miraculously common sense
I’d still feel stupid now.
I’m waiting on a final clue,
a final validation
of what I did,of what I hid,
of all I called my own.
Our high days and our holidays
are numbered, every one.
So quick the hours rush away
and everything we’ve left’s undone.
Was it only my imagination
or were we once agreed, in full accord,
that we would meet in time for reconciliation,
for the scratching of old debts
and the settling of old scores?
Once upon a time you think you’ll live forever -
only goes to show, in truth, that you
don’t even know you’re born.
Round and round we trod our drilled, diminished circles,
measured out our days in pleasantries -
what treasures we forswore.
It was only my imagination,
I thought I’d got away with what I’d done before.
I’m unprepared for this investigation.
I’m so scared of what’s in store.
And the future spread before us like a feast,
we saw clearly to the curve of the horizon,
felt like everything we’d wanted was in reach,
all we so eagerly awaited
And the perfume on the air,
oh, I could taste it....
(Decline and fall, decline and fall
is coming to us....
And when the fall comes it will hit you pretty hard
when the fortified castle proves a house of cards
and the sweet cup of plenty’s shattered into a million shards.
Your Weltanschauung is now cut down at the core
and your self-estimation’s falling through the floor
now there’s not much still standing of the edifice by which you once swore
and which you used to adore.)
The air is thin, the air is thin,
the top of the world club’s what we’re in;
how thin the air, how thin the air,
the top of the world club isn’t there any more.
My crawling skin, my crawling skin,
what circle of hell are we fallen in,
so dread and drear, so dread and drear,
the pressure above an atmosphere, open-jawed.
All the stars are darkening,
all the stars extinguishing one by one.
Worlds we thought were ours to own
disappeared and gone,
disappeared,
disappeared.