Peter Hammill - The Silent Corner & The Empty Stage (1974)
2) Wilhelmina
3) The Lie (Bernini's St. Theresa)
4) Forsaken Gardens
5) Red Shift
6) Rubicon
7) A Louse is not a Home
people are drawn together, simultaneously torn apart...
Foundations are shattered in the city
inside the barricaded doors -----
hiding behind their walls, lonely as night falls,
maybe the people are waiting for trumpets....
Babylon's strange, seventh wonder
of the earth :
gardens ablaze in colour,
slowly rotting in the dirt
and, with your head on fire,
you can't really see.
The hanging gardens sing,
but with a hollow ring :
the life is false, its
killing me....
Don't look back, or
you'll turn to stone;
look around before your life
is overgrown
with concrete slabs!
On your back the searching
eyes that stab
between chintz curtains,
glinting,
but never owning to a name
-------
like the inmates of asylums
all the citizens are
contagiously
insane....
Atlantis is strange, the
explosion of an age :
no-one really knows what to
do, and the city
is a cage.
It traps in ashen hours and
concrete towers,
imprisons in the social
order :
the city's lost its way,
madness takes hold today...
I can't live under
water.Modern
Jericho's strange,
throbbing with life at its heart :
people are drawn together,
simultaneously torn apart...
Foundations are shattered in
the city
inside the barricaded doors
-----
hiding behind their walls,
lonely as night falls,
maybe the people are waiting
for trumpets....
Babylon's strange,
seventh wonder of the earth :
gardens ablaze in colour,
slowly rotting in the dirt
and, with your head on fire,
you can't really see.
The hanging gardens sing,
but with a hollow ring :
the life is false, its
killing me....
Don't look back, or
you'll turn to stone;
look around before your life
is overgrown
with concrete slabs!
On your back the searching
eyes that stab
between chintz curtains,
glinting,
but never owning to a name
-------
like the inmates of asylums
all the citizens are
contagiously
insane....
Atlantis is strange, the
explosion of an age :
no-one really knows what to
do, and the city
is a cage.
It traps in ashen hours and
concrete towers,
imprisons in the social
order :
the city's lost its way,
madness takes hold today...
I can't live under water.
your changing life? You've come into a cruel
world : little girls can lose their way in the
growing night ----- I hope you'll be alright.
Willie, try to stay a child
sometime, for as long
as you feel you can learn.
Babies all turn to
people, and people can
really be strange : they
change and, changing, bring
pain.
Try to treat your parents
well because they care,
and what more can you do?
When you find your lovers,
be good to them as
you hope they'll be to you
------
be honest,
be true.
Willie, you are the
future; all our lives, in the end,
are in your hands. Life's
hard now --- you know,
it gets harder, and hope is
but a single strand;
we pass it on and hope
you'll understand....
We know that we do it
wrong, we're not so strong
and not so sure at all;
groping in our blindness,
we may seem big now but,
really, we're so small
and alone and searching for
a home
in the night.
Meanwhile you're still a
baby; you'll be a lady
soon enough and then you
will feel the burn.
So hold my words : people
all turn to children,
spiteful children, and
they're really so cruel...
cruel fools!
Just follow your own rules
-------
don't think that I'm silly,
Willie,
if I say I hope that there
is hope for you.
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,
like Chastity, like Lucifer,
like mine.
You took me through the
window-stain,
drowned in image, inscence,
choir-refrain
and slow ecstasy ------
I'd embrace you if I only
knew your name....
The silent corner haunts
my shadow prayers :
ice-cold statue -- rapture
divine,
unconscious eyes,
the open mouth,
the wound of love,
the Lie.
You took me, gave me
reasons for
saints and missals, vigils,
all the more
holy martyrs -----
I'd embrace you and walk
through
the one-way door...
I'd embrace you, but it
would be
just another lie ----------
( * which is to say that
the statue is the inspiration, but not the Lie)
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....
Time, alone, shall murder all the
flowers,
still, there's time to share
our plots and all that we call 'ours'.
How much worse, then, if we
all deny each others' needs
and keep our garden's
privately?
Its getting colder, wind
and rain leave gashes;
looking back, I only see the
friends I've lost.
Fires smoulder, raking
through the ashes
my hands are dirty, my mind
is numb,
I count the cost of 'I' :
"I need to get on, I've
got to tend my garden;
got to shut you out, no time
to crave your pardon now".
Now I see the garden that
I've grown is just the same
as those outside;
the fences, erected to
protect, simply divide....
There's ruination
everywhere, the weather has
played havoc with the grass
--
does anyone believe his
garden's really going to last?
In the time allotted us, can
any man keep miserly his own?
Is there any pleasure in a
solitary growth?
Come and see my garden if
you will ----
I'd like someone to see it
all before each root is killed.
Surely now its time to open
up each life to all ----
tear down the walls, if its
not too late!
There is so much sorrow
in the world;
there is so much emptiness
and heartbreak and pain;
Somewhere on the road we
have all taken a wrong
turn ----
how can we build the right
path again?
Through the grief,
through the pain,
our flowers need each
others' rain....
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
and in the brunt of
implosion, all yesterday's golden
now reddened suns ....
and hope is a word with no
space for blame in ---
Red Shift, displaced now in
time and relativity;
Red Shift, all moving away
from we.
So here I am, though I
might well be with me :
I'm falling down deep to the
rim of the wheel.
Is it sham?
Does the world have a
meaning?
The more that we know , the
greater confusion grows :
stars are like atoms, and
atoms are patterns
and probably in the end :
'Maybe its all been a dream
....'
Time locked in negative
matter, all theories shatter
beneath the weight.
Happy is the man who
believes that the world
is a dream and all reason,
fate.
Time moves on with no time;
the eye moves on with no
rhyme,
and I'm a song in the depth
of the galaxies ---
Red Shift is taking away my
sanity;
Red Shift, all moving away
from we ....
and I come in laughing play ----
but, maybe, to be saved.
Peer through the
backcloth : I am a character in the play,
the words I slur are
pre-ordained ----
we know them anyway.
Don't change your mind,
don't be a fickle friend;
don't change your mind,
don't pretend
to something false.
Open the toy-box : you
are Pandora, I am the World.
If you cross the stream, you
never can return;
If you stay, you'll surely
burn.
Don't change your mind,
don't come all orchid eyes;
don't change your mind,
don't disguise the fear
you feel :
it's real, and you must
guard your castle well, for
I am the lone wolf,
and the boar at bay -----
grant me your Pax, you know
we only live today,
and on, and on, and into :
"so Long" -- it
takes so long to drown;
it takes so very long to
choke on the taste you'd spurned.
If you cross the stream you
never can return;
If you stay you'll surely
burn.
Not A Home
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,
but seven years' dark luck is just around the corner
and in the shadows lurks the spectre of Despair.
A cracked mirror mid the drapes of the landing :
split image, labored understanding ----
I'm only trying to find a place to hide my home ....
I've lived in houses composed of
glass
where every movement is
charted,
but now the monitor screens
are dark
and I can't tell if silent
eyes are there.
My words are spiders upon
the page,
they spin out faith, hope
and reason ----
but are they meet and just,
or only dust
gathering about my chair?
Sometimes I get the feeling
that there's
someone else there :
The faceless watcher makes
me uneasy,
I can feel him through the
floorboards,
and His presence is creepy
----
He informs me that I shall
be expelled ....
What is that but out of and
into :
I don't know the nature of
the door that I'd go through,
I don't know the nature of
the nature
that I am inside ....
I've lived in houses of
brick and lead
where all emotion is sacred,
and if you want to devour
the fruit
you must first sniff at the
fragrance
and lay your body before the
shrine
with poems and posies and
papers ----
or, if you catch the ruse,
you'll have to choose
to stay, a monk, or leave, a
vagrant.
What is this place you call
home?
Is it a sermon or a
confession?
Is it the chalice that you
use for protection?
Is it really only somewhere
you can stay?
Is it a rule-book or a
lecture?
Is it a beating at the hands
of your Protector?
Does the idol have feet of
clay?
Home is what you make it, so
my friends
all say,
but I rarely see their homes
in these dark days.
Some of them are snails and
carry houses
on their backs;
others live in monuments
which, one day,
will be racks --
I keep my home in place with
sellotape
and tin-tacks,
but I still feel there's
some other Force here :
He who cracks the mirrors
and moves the walls
keeps staring through the
eye-slits of the portraits
in my hall;
He ravages my library and
taps the telephone --
I've never actually seen
Him,
but I know He's in my home
and if he goes away,
I can't stay here either.
I believe -- er -- I think
--
well, I don't know ......
I only live in one room
at a time,
but all of the walls are
ears, all the windows, eyes :
Everything else is foreign,
'Home' is my wordless chant
:
mmmmmaah!
Give it a chance!
I am surrounded by flesh
and bone,
I am a temple of living,
I am a hermit, I am a drone,
and I am boning out a place
to be.
With secret garlands about
my head
unearthly silence is broken
:
the room is growing dark,
and in the stark light
I can see a face I know ----
could this be the guy who
never shows
the cracked mirror what he's
feeling,
merely mumbles prayers to
the ground where
he's kneeling :
"Home is home is home
is home is home is home is me!"
All you people looking for
your houses,
don't throw your weight
around, you might
break your glasses
and if you do, you know you
just can't see
and then how are you to find
the dawning
of the day?
--- Day is just a word I use
to keep the dark
at bay,
and people are imaginary,
nothing else exists
except the room I'm sitting
in,
and, of course, the
all-pervading mist ---
sometimes I wonder if even
that's real ....
Maybe I should de-louse this
place;
Maybe I should de-place this
louse;
Maybe I'll maybe my life
away
in the confines of this
silent house.
Sometimes it's very scary
here; sometimes it's very sad;
sometimes I think I'll
disappear; sometimes I think ..... "
