Gone Ahead Lyrics

Peter Hammill Gone Ahead

We bite off our tongues while chewing the fat; though the fire in our lungs is celestial our delivery falls flat. Would a time come to be silent? Oh, we never spoke of that.

We talked out of turn in the school of hard knocks; although willing to learn from experience it still comes as a shock when the time comes to be silent... one by one the jaws all drop.

The voice is still clear in my head; it's the last word in monologue.... close-up, interior, night.

mmm...

The voices alive in my head are all tongue-tied to silence now.

It's the darkest of moods, it's the cruellest of jokes that this facility I used, once so fluent, is cut out at a stroke. And the time came to be silent as the core connection broke.... absurd ineloquence, my own words on which I choke.

Swallowing deep on the thread, so much I'm losing now, so many things left unsaid and the voice I've been using is gone ahead.