Just one crazy moment while the dice are cast,
|
he looks into the future and remembers
|
what is past,
|
wonders what he's doing on this battlefield,
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shrugs to his shadow, impatient,
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too proud yet to kneel.
|
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In his wake he leaves scorched earth
|
and work in vain;
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smoke drifts up behind him - he is free again,
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free to run before the onslaught of a deadly foe,
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leaving nothing fit for pillage,
|
hardly leaving home.
|
It's far too late to turn, unless it's to stone.
|
Charging madly forward, tracks across the snow,
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wind screams madness to him, ever on he goes
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leaving spoor to mark his passage,
|
trace his weary climb.
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Cross the moor and make the headland -
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stumbling, wayward, blind.
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In the end his footprints extend as one single line.
|
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This latest exponent of heresy is goaded
|
into an attack,
|
persuaded to charge at his enemy.
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Too late, he knows it is, too late now
|
to turn back,
|
too soon by far to falter.
|
The past sits uneasily at his rear,
|
he's walking right into the trap,
|
surrounded, but striving through will and fear.
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Ahead of him he knows there waits an ambuscade
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but the dice slip through his fingers
|
and he's living from day to day,
|
carrying his world around upon his back,
|
leaving nothing behind but the tell-tale
|
of his track.
|
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He will not be hostage, he will not be slave,
|
no snare of past can trap him,
|
though the future may.
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Still he runs and burns behind him
|
in advanced retreat;
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still his life remains unfettered -
|
he denies defeat.
|
It's far too late to turn, unless it's to stone.
|
Leave the past to burn - at least
|
that's been his own.
|
|
Scorched earth, that's all that's
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left when he's done;
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holding nothing but beholden to no-one,
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claiming nothing, out of no false pride,
|
he survives.
|
Snow tracks are all that's left to be seen
|
of a man who entered the course of a dream,
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claiming nothing but the life he's known
|
- this, at least, has been his own.
|
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-----------------
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Scorched Earth
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Van Der Graaf Generator |