Peter Hammill Dropping The Torch
We play games and every move
is noted down as a subsequent cause
and effectively chains our freedom and will to live;
we settle in to simple survival,
hanging on our pleasures grimly...
we must never let them go.
Our prison walls are slowly built,
stone by stone and day by day;
no provision for escape,
entombed alive in safety
and decay.
Time sets around us in killing frames,
black border round our names.
Our fingers lose their grip
and the torch slips.
The enemy for everyone
is everyone, inside.
I feel the hand of security
creep on me with ice-cold fingers
and crush my flower of freedom;
I've lost the course of my adventure,
all the things I'd meant to do are lost.
There is only one flame each
to keep alive in the wind.
But finally we snuff them out
all by ourselves.
We set traps and, in the end,
fall into our own snares
and have nowhere to go.
Time ever moves more slowly;
life gets more lonely
and less real.
