Peter Hammill все тексты (слова) песен, переводы, видео, клипы

Sometimes it's very scary here; sometimes it's very sad;
sometimes I think I'll disappear; betimes I think I have.
There's a line snaking down my mirror :
splintered glass distorts my face,
and though the light is strong and strange
it can't illuminate the musty corners of this place.
There is a lofty, lonely, Lohengrenic castle in the clouds --
I draw my murky meanings there,

A Perfect Date.

A perfect date to hesitate,
I hope it won't be too long.

You're a sucker for the punch
and the telegraph bells are ringing;
now it's coming to the crunch

[Chorus] Three endless days of bitter grief passed
And Montresor abandoned any attempt to cheer his friend.
Then came a sudden change in Usher's
Demeanour, whose significance he was soon to comprehend.
Now Usher stands for hour on hour
With head inclined and eyes half-closed,
As if beneath the deep and sullen silence
A sound exists for which he listens; a sound without end.

I stretch my hands
Clutch vacant laughter
In silence and sweet, sweet pain
Without demand
But with a longing
For what will never come again
I smell your perfume
On the sheets in the morning

I stand on the tallest building
and stare down at the grey runway
and the tail-smoke of the Boeing jet
that's taking you so far away

Believe me, I don't want you to leave me;
look in my eyes and you'll see them
filled with pain

AUTUMN

So here we are, alone -
our children have grown up and moved away,
living their own lives, they say...
It all seems very strange to me.

I don't understand their ways:

Been alone so long
that I've forgotten what it's like
to feel somebody next to me
and hear her breathing peacefully
when I wake up at night.
Been alone so long
that I've forgotten what to say--
if I meet somebody who

When I began I was full of altruistic dreams,
believed in princes and princesses, kings and queens -
now I find they're all human inside,
all bitterness and pride,
so why shouldn't I be like that too?
It seems that I've forgotten all I tried so hard to learn;
It seems there's not an ounce of love or trust
anywhere in the world.

Let's begin at the top:
There's no reason to think that this will ever stop,
So let's go back and start again;
In this finite uncertainty we'll circle round and then
Sail a craft of self-conviction
Across tomorrow-never-knows
Where the surface stays unruffled
While the coral clusters quietly down below.

CRYING WOLF
You turn out the lights and sit alone,
trying to pretend that it's anguish;
start at the ring of a telephone,
throw down all your food at the banquet,
keep a close eye on all you own,
while leaving it all to languish:-
Is this what makes you happy?

You don't have to say a thing,
The silence is sweet,
We've been together today
In a way we might never repeat.
Oh, your head on the pillow,
The distance in your eyes
Already you might be
Rehearsing the word "Goodbye".

"I know you haven't got the thread of the story so far.
Just throw your luggage into the back of the car.
We'll drive around until you think I've gone too far
but you can't go home,
no, there's no way home.
You haven't lost the plot but there's detail you lack.
This is a one-way trip and there's no turning back.
No protestation can divert us from the track we're set upon.

Как просто исчезнуть

Друзья мои, я действительно никогда не думал, что вы уйдете,
но, потом, мы знаем, что именно так и произошло.
Сейчас время - как "колыбель для кошки" в моих руках:
я тяну за нитки слишком медленно.

Беглецы ушли... Они выбрали свои собственные дороги,

With my face drained of colour
and my brain of blood
like Billy Budd
I'm lashed to the grating;
with senses growing duller
and with quaking heart
I make a start
at temperature equating

Time has come between us:
in the passing months I've felt you slip away
as your words and mine came like nursery rhymes
till there was nothing left to say
Distance came between us long ago,
as our memories faded away
over the miles I ceased to smile
because nothing felt the same

Where are all the joys of yesterday?
Where, now, is the happiness and laughter that we shared?
Gone, like our childhood dreams, aspirations and beliefs --
Time is a thief, and he ravages our gardens,
stripping saplings, felling trees,
trampling on our flowers, sucking sap and drying seeds.
In the midnight candle-light of experience
all colour fades, green fingers grey....

Manheim; rainy Saturday with no money nor friend,
Only Tequila can end the boredom.
Try to reach London for a pocket of hope;
We're children, we grope in the dark.
Hugh spends his last Mark on coffee and cheese...
I feel just like a refugee...
Rathaus-keepers and traffic police,
Middle-aged maids with rotting teeth

СЧАСТЛИВЫЕ

Как же так случилось,
что мы встретились в первый раз?
Я забыл; все, что я знаю -
это то, что ты выглядишь счастливой.

Мы гуляем и порой говорим;

Foot down in the G Ti Cabriolet
to the villa in the South of France
for vacation;
keep your head down, baby,
keep your hair in golden curls
and you will alays be his,
and you will always be his best girl.
Fast forward on the handycam video;

I once wrote some poems of stillness and silence,
Standing by rivers of reflected light;
My thoughts were on being loved and yet unloved, too -
I surrendered to the warmth of the night.
And now I feel like dying,
And if the water were still here,
It would hold me close.
I once wrote a poem while walking on gravestones,

You must be crazy to stay here,
and I'll be crazy when you go;
though there's so much I want to tell you
all the words come out too slow
I've been locked in my problems...
you seemed prepared to wait.
Now that I know I'm gonna lose you
all the words come out too late.

Dance the dance
till show time
... the show goes on
Dance the dance
in slow time
if that's what you want
Dance the dance
in the back of the car

As we walk so we tread
on the words left unsaid
I can't say them no matter how hard I try

We chatter on, then the moment's gone,
the one for which I've hoped
and I've prayed and I've planned.
Stop the clock's advance!

Drawing back the curtains,
sluggish city daylight in the afternoon...
Here's that special silence,
just before you walk out of the hotel room.
Each time we're so close I assume
that we'll never be again -
oh, how long can we pretend
that we're just good friends?

Unchain me from this lunatic
before he drags me to my knees;
I'd have to be some kind of Houdini
to unpick knots like these.

While I was sleeping half a lifetime away
someone moved the scenery,
all my blocks went astray.

If I'm the mirror and you're the image
then what's the secret between the two,
these "me"s and "you"s, how many can there be?
Oh, I don't mind all that around the place,
as long as you keep it
well away from me.

I've begun to regret that we ever met

It was nothing, it came from nowhere at all, it was a casual remark,
Not a curtain-call.
Late for breakfast - black coffee, brandy-laced...
That look on your face.
I'll remember last night; I'll look out for the signs;
You were caught in the light
Ref.
Time after time

Beside the pool of clear water
Fed by a secret spring, your lips are sealed
But in your body language
Angels sing
I swear on the Bible
Swear on the sacred and profane

I think I'm drowning in the vortex

Ophelia.

That token drag on your cigarette,
that well-known face in the fire,
it could be someone you can't forget,
someone you've learnt to admire.

And it's strange how the feeling goes;

I might as well give you all there is,
I might as well take it all the way:
what's gone is forgotten, and anyway
surely words alone could not wreck your day?
The cake's not worth the candle, so they say....
'Nothing ventured, nothing gained,
no hard feelings', other old cliches.
I've held back my feelings for so long

Porton Down.

Won't hear a sound at Porton Down,
the clear liquids keep their silence,
buried underground at Porton Down
the fast form of the final violence.

Quite right to be worried about the proliferation

Once, all the stars in the sky were bright,
now they're red and fading
And all the colours we wore, the shades that we bore
have moved.
And the gold turns to red with no time for changes :
Red Shift, all moving away from we.
Once, constellations were holy, now darkness pervades
all the older ones

You can see in the last light that's graced as dawn
that there's nothing in my heart but pain
as I stand, facing sea, knowing that you're gone...
all the elements rage to explain
that I should really be on my way
but there is something
which ensures I must stay.

You lay your plans, I take them as they come,
I understand: we dance to different drums.
It's not in any schoolbook, you're here to teach
a lesson to us all... we play by different rule-books
What you say, what you do,
they're such different things, which is true?
Now the telephone rings, Mephistopheles calling...
Forty pieces for each lie you've told

Sitting Targets.

We can talk about it in the car;
we can talk about it with the drive.
Keep your eyes on the road up ahead,
don't forget what we said about staying alive.
If we'd been stuck just a few hours more
I'd have cracked up, I'd say.

Silently I rest in the tall green grass
And look steadily upwards
Birds sing ceaselessly around me
And the blue of the sky surrounds me strangely

Out here, life is at its essence
And watches the world with innocent eyes;
Far from grime, far from rushing people

Stranger Still.

Stranger still in another town,
how normal to sit out the dance,
eating the good meal by myself,
toasting the empty glass;
and they're already setting out the next place,
already forgetting about the last.

Stumbled

Wash your hands clean,
don't let anybody see the dirty work.
Keep those secrets
locked away from sight forever,
hidden safely where your darker side still runs berserk.

Summer song in the autumn, for you didn't catch
the colour of the falling leaves.
So many words have been spoken which you
didn't understand and so couldn't believe.
And the song that you're humming is yesterday's tune -
Someone who you love is leaving you.

You walking in sunshine by the sea with gull crying overhead;

Oh, suddenly things begin to come clear in my mind
as I look into the land laid bare by your eyes;
E-S/M attractions are working behind my thought,
I can't help my feelings, the way that my emotions
are over-wrought.
Refrain:
Good morn
ing, sunshine!

When I was a child they made me read
Word-daggers of quiver and squirm
Now in the stumbling dark I see I am
A worm silently fruiting your garden
My sister my child night casts ominous
Meanings on the purity of my soul
I feel devilish leanings I'm beginning
To lose control and the vortex sucks

Spring came far too early this year,
May flowers blooming in February.
Should I be sad for the months,
Or glad for the sky?
The birds don't know which way to sing and, my friends,
Neither do I.

Two days ago, a girl I truly thought I loved

They say we are endowed with Free Will
--at least that justifies our need for indecision.
But between our insticts and the lust to kill
we bow our heads in submission.
They say that no man is an island
but then they say our castles are our homes;
it's felt the choice is ours, between peace and violence
...oh, yes, we choose, alone?

Here we are, static in the latter half
Of the twentieth century
But it might as well be the Middle Ages,
There'll have to be some changes
But how they'll come about foxes me.
I want the future now,
I want to hold it in my hands;
All men equal and unbowed,

Genuflection, erection in church.
Sacristy cloth, moth-eaten shroud.
Secret silence, sacred secrets
Accumulate dust, aggravate the eye.

Incautious laughter after confession.
Benediction, fictional fear
Hidden faces, grace is a name,

Indecision and uncertainty
catch you now as they never have before
How come you didn't recognize
the revolving door?
Oh, you're gonna take sides
on the checkered floor
It used to be so easy
You saw everything in black and white

The Spirit.

Such distance to the tips of the fingers,
the ganglion loom jerks inside;
the body grows steadily stranger
but the spirit won't be denied.

That sharp halogen flash jars the eyeball,

In my youth, I played at trains: now all steam is gone.
In my dreams, brief shelter from the rain,
I try to catch the fireglow...
with Dinky Toys, I thought that I was Stirling;
with cricket bat, I say myself as Peter May;
now, with all these images returning,
I wonder who I am today?
As a child, I refought the war, with plastic planes

And the future spread before us like a feast,
we saw clearly to the curve of the horizon,
felt like everything we'd wanted was in reach,
all we so eagerly awaited
And the perfume on the air,
oh, I could taste it....

(Decline and fall, decline and fall

I'm in command,
I'm in control,
I am the captain of my soul.
Still, I'm uncertain in one major role...
Oh, I drift through the unconscious life,
Shift through the unconscious life,
Lift up my unconscious eyes:
Beyond all normal pain and pleasure

Away from the past, this chance is the last,
we are changing completely,
we are moving the feast, we are motion.
I've seen you become the bride of the sun,
you surrender so sweetly,
sacrificing yourself to devotion.

This book is ended and I put it down,

The stars in the heavens still shine
up above me: how lovely they'd seem
if you were with me
but you're gone through the looking-glass
and I am left to pass these nights alone.

I'm lost, I'm dumb, I'm blind,
I am drunk with sadness,

Thinking back, it seems that I
can lie beside you as I never truly did,
in afterglow -
no afterwords at all.
Only writing love songs when it's gone and dead;
only paying words out: strings of half-forgotten sentiments...
I mean...
I meant...

So many years ago I thought you were the one...
who knows when people change, surrender into strangeness,
adrift upon their lives, encompassed by the past;
who knows which one becomes the last goodbye?
Don't try to tell me nothing dies.
Don't try to tell me nothing's changed,
don't try to tell me nothing's new,
too many of my yesterdays belong to you.

Looking out forward over the prow of our long ship,
pulling our oars and listening to the foam;
helmets and sheepskins salt-damp in the sea-mist:
We're going home.

Aslak of Langadale, Einar Thorgeirsson,
Olaf the White and Sigurd the Powerful...

I have a vision of you, locked inside my head;
It creeps upon my mind, and warms me in my bed...
A vision shimering, shifting
Moving in false firelight;
A vision of a vision,
Protecting me from fear at night,
As the seasons roll on, and my love stays strong.
I don't know where you end, and where it is that I begin.

Nothing is like anything else,
Everything's the same,
Our progress punctuated
By a series of coincidence
To form a logical chain.
Nothing is like everything else,
Like anything you name.
Pomposity unpunctured,

Your Face On The Street

I'd see your face on the street
often times as I went on my day to day.
We were never to meet
but a nodding acquaintance had come our way.

I never paid it much mind,