VAN DER GRAAF
GENERATOR
Still Life
1. PILGRIMS
Sometimes you feel so far away,
Distances from all the action of the play,
Unable to grasp significance,
Marking the plot with diffedent dismay,
Stranded at centre stage,
Scrabbing through your diary for a lost
Page: unsure of the dream.
Kicking a stone across the beach,
Aching for love and comfort out of reach,
The way ahead seems to be so bleak,
There's no-one with any friendship left to
Speak or show you any relation
Between your present and future
Situations: lost to the dream.
Away, away, away: look to the future day
For hope, some form of peace within the
Growing storm.
I climb through the evening,
Alive and believing:
In time we shall all know our goals
And so finally, home.
For now all is secret -
Through how could I speak it,
Allow me the dream in my eye.
I've been waiting for such a long time
Just to see it at last,
All of the hands tightly clasped,
All of us pilgrims.
Walking in silence down the coast,
Merely to journey - here hope is the most;
Merely to know there is an end,
All of us - lovers, brothers, sisters, friends
Hand in hand.
Shining foorprints on the wet sand
Lead to the dream.
The time has come, the tide has almost
Run and drained the deep: I rise from
Lifelong sleep.
It seems such a long time
I've dreamed but now, awake, I
Can see we are pilgrims and so
Must walk this road,
Unknown in our purpose,
Alone, but not worthless,
And home ever calling us on.
We've been waiting here so long
All of our hands joined in hope,
Holding the weight on the rope,
All of us pilgrims.
2. STILL LIFE
Citadel reverberates to a thousand voices,
Now dumb;
What have we become?
What have we chosen to be?
Now all history is reduced to the syllables
Of 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 through 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
Of make-believe.
Marshall every sullen breath and through
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 dullest 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 there?
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.
3. LA ROSSA
Lacking sleep and food and vision
Here I am again, encamped upon your
Floor, craving sanctuary and
Nourishment, encouragement and
Sanctity and more.
The streets seemed very crowded,
I put on my bravest guise -
I know you know that I am acting,
I can see it in your eyes,
In the harsh light of freedom I know
That I cannot deny that I have wasted
Time, have frittered it away in the idle boasts
Of my freedom and fidelity, when simpler
Words would have profited me most ...
...It isn't enough in the end, when I'm
Looking for hope.
Though the organ-monkey screams as the
Pipes begin to spit
Still he'll go through the dance routines
Just as long as he thinks they'll fit,
Just as long as he knows that it's dance,
Smile - or quit.
Like the monkey I dance to a strange tune
When all of these years I've longed to lie
With you but have bogged myself down in
The web of talk, quack philosophy
And sophistry -
At physically I've always baulked, like the
Man in the chair who believes it's beyond
Him to walk.
I've been hiding behind words,
Fearing a deeper flame exists,
Faintly aware of the passage
Of opportunities I have missed.
But the nearness and the smell of you,
La Rossa from head to toe...
I don't know what I'm telling you,
But I think you ought to know
Soon the dam wall will break,
Soon the water will flow.
Though the organ-monkey groans
As the organ grinder plays
He's hoping at the most,
For an end to the dancing days;
Still, he hops up and down on his perch
In the usual jerky way.
Though it might mean an end to all
Friendship there's something
I'm working up to say.
Think of me what you will;
I know that you think you feel my pain -
No matter if that's just surface.
If we made love now would that change
All that has gone before?
Of course it would, there's no way it could
Ever be the same...
One more line crossed,
One more mystery explained.
Now I need more that just words, though
The options are plain that lead from all
Momentary action.
If we make love now it will change all that
Is yet to be...
Never could we agree in the same
Way again
On more world lost,
One more heaven gained.
La Rossa, you know me, you read me as
Though I am glass;
Though I know it there's no way in which
I can pass -
Though it means that you'll finish my story
At last I'd trade all the clever talk,
The joking, the smoking and the quips,
All the midnight conversation,
All the friendship,
All the words and all the trips
For the warmth of your body,
The more vivid touch of your lips.
All bridges burning behind me,
All safety beyond reacg,
The monkey feels his chains out blindly,
Only to find himself released.
Take me, take me now and hold me deep
Inside your ocean body,
Wash me as some flotsam to the shore,
There leave me lying evermore!
Drown me, drown me now and hold me down
Before you naked hunger,
Burn me at the altar of the night -
Give me life!
4. MY ROOM
Searching for diamonds in the sulphur mine,
Leaning on props which are rotten,
Hoping for anything, looking for sign
That I am not forgotten.
Lost in a labyrinth of future mystery,
Tracing my steps, all mistaken,
Trusting to everything, praying it can be
That I am not forsaken.
I wait by the door, wondering
When you will come and keep me warm.
I pray for the end of the night,
Hoping the light will still the storm
Which presently betrays me;
Helpless sea-monster stranded on the shore,
Marooned in an ecstasy of waiting.
I yearn, although knowing that
I shall dive no more
In the tide already racing.
My lungs burst to cry: "Finally
How could you leave me here to die?
I freeze in the chill of this place
With no friendly face to smile goodbye -
How could you let it happen?"
How could you let it happen?
Dreams, hopes and promises,
Fragments out of time,
All of these things have been spoken;
Still you don't understand how it feels
When I'm waiting for them to be broken
5. CHILDLIKE FAITH IN
CHILDHOOD'S END
Existence is a stage on which we pass,
A sleep-walk trick for mind and heart:
It's hopeless, I know
But onward I must go
And try to make a start
At seeing something more that day-to-day
Survival chased by final death.
If I believed this the sum
Of the life to which we've come
I wouldn't waste my breath.
Somehow, there must be more.
There was a time when more
Was felt than known,
But now, entrenched inside my sett,
In light more mundane, thought rattles
Round my brain:
We live, we die... and yet?
In the beginning there was order and
Destiny but now that path has reached the
Border and on our knees is no way to face
The future, whatever it be.
Though the forces which hold us in place
Last through eons in unruffled grace
We, too, wear the face of creation.
As anti-matter sucks and pulses
Periodically the bud unfolds, the bloom
Is dead, all space is living history.
It seems as though time must betray us,
Yet we're alive
And though I see no God to save us
Still we survive
Through the centuries of progress
Which don't get us very far.
All illusion! All is bogus - we don't yet
Know what we are ... laughing, hoping,
Praying, joking, Son of Man!
With lowered eyes but lifting hearts,
We're grains of sand
And though, in time, the sea may claim us
For its own
We are the rocks which root the future -
On us it grows!
We might not be there to share it if
Eternity's a jest
But I think that I can bear it
If the next life is the best.
Even if there is a heaven when we die
Endless bliss would be as meaningless
As the lie that always comes as answer to
The question 'Why do we see through the
Eyes of creation?'
Adrift without a course, it's very lonely here,
Our only conjecture what lies
Behind the dark.
Still, I find I can cling to a lifeline,
Think of a lifetime which means more than
My own one - dreams of a grander thing
Than we are.
Time and Space hang heavy on my shoulders:
When all life is over who can say
No mutated force shall remain?
Though the towers of the city are denied
To we man of clay
Still we know we shall scale the heights some day.
Frightened in the silence -
Frightened, but thinking very hard,
Let us make computations of the stars.
Older, wiser, sadder, blinder, watch us run:
Faster, longer, harder, stronger, now it comes:
Colour blisters, image splinters
Gravitate towards the centre, in final
Splendour disintegrate.
The universe now beckons
And Man, too, must take His place ...
Just a few last fleeting seconds
To wander in the waste
And the children who were ourselves
Move on
Reincarnation stills its now perfected song
And at last we are freed of the bonds
Of creation.
All the jokers and gaolers, all the junkies
And slavers too,
All the throng who have danced a merry
Tune - human we can all be.
But Humanity we must rise above
In the name of all faith and hope and love.
There's a time for all pilgrims, and a time
For the fakers too,
There's a time when we all will stand alone
And nude,
Naked to the galaxies -
Naked, but clothed in the overview ...
As we reach Childhood's End we start anew.
And though dark is the highway
And the peak's distance breaks my heart,
For I never shall see it, still I play my part,
Believing that what waits for us is the
Cosmos compared to the dust of the past ...
In the death of mere humans life shall start!
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