Again

Peter Hammill

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 the present...
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