peter hammill
faint-heart and the sermon
With my face drained of colour And my brain of blood Like Billy Budd I'm lashed to the grating; With senses growing duller And with quaking heart I make a start At temperature equating And my lungs suck useless air. Like paraplegic dancers In format Ion team My understanding seems Hiidebound in its movements, Contemplating answers That could break my bonds-- To be half wrong Would be, in me, improvement... But my comprehensive faculties are impaired. And it seems absurd, but now all I've heard F Ades in empty words and is worthless As the Human Laugh rocks the cenotaph But the joke is half-true, and mirthless. Trying to trace a reason From the spinning words But all I've heard Seem at odds with their meanings, Phonetically pleasing But deliv Ered in such haste That in their place My mind commences screaming. On the verge of belief I crash onto the reef And a cynical thief steals my senses, So I cling to the pew with dimensions askew, And recognition refuses present tenses. All the lives  of the saints demonstrate that my faint Is a minor complaint, but the end is Nowhere in sight, Why can't I find me a way to go? I don't want to die in the nave, But I know it may be with me some day So I've got to find a way I can save up My evergies, and find a cause to pray So something for something To which I can give my creed... I'd gladly succumb to the wave, If I thought the water taught a way to light; I'd gladly succumb--I'm not brave, And it's easy to believe what the preacher says Except for the conflict raging between my head And my brain. I don't want to die, but just the same-- Some day.... Waiting for that moment That I know will come When I'll have to run And find another sermon... Everyman and Norman And the talking priest-- Still, I am at least Holding all the doors open. Inside me all outside is shared. As the cracked bells peal it all seems unreal But the seventh seal stays unbroken And the Offertory plate tenders no escape-- Still I refuse to scrape up a token Of e Steem for these false Alleyways of the course; I must try to divorce sense from sensing. Tell me again, Tell me the way to go. So when I talk to myself Although I take good care to listen My heart grows ever more faint-- There's something missing?