The Sphinx In The Face

(Hammill)

I remember what it felt like at seventeen:

I was a cat, a snake, a lizard, a mouse.

Still got an interest in the limousine and a spouse and a brat, country house,

London flat.

I'm gonna head for the island when the summer's out,

I'm gonna do all the stuff that

I can, drink like a fish in a waterspout -

I'm a fan of the flow it began long ago

I'm a man who should know it doesn't stop.

There's so much to remember, so much to forget: we're all in the possession of the future tense, but don't know it yet.

The flesh comes through the spirit, the spirit through the flesh... we look the

Sphinx in the face for answers and of course we're really not impressed.

We're caught between age and beauty, experience and youth so we feel the need acutely for any kind of

Truth. Oh but we get copped some days, caught between options we've failed to play, such wasted chance.

So I join the wastrel's dance: it has slow as well as fast movement and any change must be an improvement on simply fossilising, standing still.

I got a steady vocation for the

Quiet Zone,

I just can't wait for the song to be sung,

I'm still possessed by the promise of the

Pleasure Dome

You're so young, so oldd, such a drag to be told.

You're so here, so gone, so near, so wrong, so queer, so strong

Such a drag to be told....