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Still Life
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Peter Hammill
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1
Citadel reverberates to a thousand voices, now dumb:
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What have we become? What have we chosen to be?
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Now, all history is reduced to the syllables of our name -
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Nothing can ever be the same now the Immortals are here.
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At the time, it seemed a reasonable course
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To harness all the force of life without the threat of death,
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But soon we found
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That boredom and inertia are not negative,
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But all the law we know
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And dead are Will and words like survival.
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Arrival at immunity from all age, all fear and all end....
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Why do I pretend? Our essence is distilled
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And all familiar taste is now drained
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And though purity is maintained it leaves us sterile,
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Living through the millions of years,
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A laugh as close as any tear....
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Living, if you claim that all that entails is
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Breathing, eating, defecating, screwing, drinking,
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Spewing, sleeping, sinking ever down and down
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And ultimately passing away time
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Which no longer has any meaning.
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Take away the threat of death
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And all you're left with is a round of make-believe;
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Marshal every sullen breath
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And though you're ultimately bored by endless ecstasy
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That's still the ring by which you hope to be engaged
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To marry the girl who will give you forever -
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That's crazy, and plainly
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It simply is not enough.
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What is the dullest and bluntest of pains,
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Such that my eyes never close without feeling it there?
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What abject despair demands an end to all things of infinity?
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If we have gained, how do we now meet the cost?
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What have we bargained, and what have we lost?
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What have we relinquished, never even knowing it was there?
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What chance now of holding fast the line,
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Defying death and time
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When everything we had is gone?
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Everything we laboured for and favoured more
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Than earthly things reveals the hollow ring
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Of false hope and of false deliverance.
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But now the nuptial bed is made,
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The dowry has been paid;
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The toothless, haggard features of Eternity
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Now welcome me between the sheets
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To couple with her withered body - my wife.
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Hers forever,
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Hers forever,
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Hers forever
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In still life
Van Der Graaf Generator - Still Life
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