Peter Hammill - A Headlong Stretch lyrics

Up Ahead Pa**age a**ured on the good ship Goodbye... dare I raise up my eyes to stare into the rigging? (Preparing to go/come home...) All we could have done we're at pains to explain but all our might in the main is only empty promise unfulfilled at last still no-one can be blamed for breaking daily bread, thinking ahead. Blessed with strange grace and reluctant to face ineluctable fate, I say I saw the future I said forget the past but I'll not hear the last of lives I've never led, thinking ahead. Continental Drift We make the beds in which we'll stretch in unconscious pre-planning; tending and hedging our bets thinking we're thinking ahead. Out of the blue comes the given life, out of the window volition. In small miracles, in constant reinvention we make sense of each current position. Every choice that we make, every trick that we turn up appears in its principle sound. Yeah, we're self-made men, masters of our destiny, free and unbound... In to the heart comes the brave new world where we're slaves to the strength of conviction... I believe decisions come like continents to conquer like I believe we're no strangers to fiction. Every road that we take means a journey rejected we pretend we can still have it all; every future we dream a virtual reality, only vanity still holds us enthralled when the best laid plans of mice and men all unravel in the judgement call. Pride still make us ride for a fall. Surely we look ripe for a fall, surely we look ripe for a fall; maybe we just ride for the fall. The Twelve The jury's out upon the matter and they can barely bear to admit that all the time that we spend planning in the end will matter not one whit. Though I've certainly considered every vital pro and con I get no scent of an acquittal I lose the drift... the signs are wrong. What's going on? (Twelve signs of the zodiac, twelve hours to face, the twelve disciples all aquiver, twelve arrows strike a twelve-tone case.) Round and round in repetition of the flight from boredom into thrill and all the time we're waiting on the punchline, the hollow laugh within "we will'. What won't we give to take up the turning over of a new leaf? No-one ever reaching future perfect; before we know it, beyond belief we come to grief, we hit the reef. Long Light Signs serial adrift in the air immaterial face up to the phosphor flare. Ghost essence fuels fire in the rig; incandescence let's dance out the mystery jig. Jig, dance the dance of mystery light, dance the dance, jig, dance the dance infernally bright. Dark water dark fire down below... storm quarter time to dance out the mystery – no! The twelve will swing us to completeness right from the cradle to the grave and all our future projection's only second guessing seventh waves... A break in the connections we thought were built to last here's a change in the weather, Tsunami time – the wave's already rolling in towards us from the past. Backwards Man It's only looking backwards that you retrace your hand, it's only in a moment of reversal that you can see where you stand... ease out, come through the film and through the mirror welcome the backwards man. Oh yes, the beach still stirs the ocean, and soon the tide will turn the moon round all is forgiven and all was foreseen – all's as it ever could be. Ends forced motive out of meaning means all even out in the end; retracing steps, in the process you learn to stand, learn to walk again so much gets forgotten, so much is forsworn in retrospect. Did I really do that? Was I ever so young? It's here, looking backwards that you confront your own face it's only in such moments of reversal that you're secure in place. Through the fire backwards again and again return to base. As You Were It's some relief to find the possible in store; beyond belief, in overtime, I'm overboard... uncharted waters, full fathom five, the future's rising, it's just arrived. It's not the same as I imagined it would be but there's no blame if every life's imaginary. And if I get quite what I deserve that'll end the sentence, the time I've served a full stop to the sentence... When it's all done you willed the person you've become in serious fun it's as you were that you become and so it's done. Or So I Said I saw the future or so I said... How strange they seem, the lives I've never led, thinking ahead. (I'm ready to come home...) So head on, headlong, headstrong. (I'm ready to go...)