Peter Hammill Again

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--

it linger like the patterns

on the window after rain,

a past that lives,

if only for th epresent...

which is gone and will never come again.

to your sad eyes,

turned away, mine say

'Do you? Did you? How?'

As the darkness

slides away the day

shows what was

and makes what is now.

I see your picture

as though it were a mirror

but there's no part of you

outside the frame

except the change that you game to me:

this will never come again.

I am me,

I was so before you,

but afterwards I am not the same.

You are gone

and I am with you:

this will never come again.

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