A Headlong Stretch: iii. The Twelve letra

The jury's out upon the matter
and they can barely bear to admit
that all the time we spend planning
in the end will matter not one whit.

Though I've certainly considered
every vital pro and con
I get no scent of an acquittal
I lose the drift..... the signs are wrong
What's going on?

(Twelve signs of the zodiac,
twelve hours to face,
the twelve disciples all aquiver,
twelve arrows strike a twelve-tone case.)

Round and round in repetition
of the flight from boredom into thrill
and all the time we're waiting on the punchline,
the hollow laugh within "we will'.

What won't we give to take up
the turning over of a new leaf?
No-one ever reaching future perfect.....
before we know it, beyond belief
we come to grief, we hit the reef.

Peter Hammill - Letras

• (No More) The Submariner
• (On Tuesday She Used To Do) Yoga
• A Better Time
• A Forest Of Pronouns
• A Headlong Stretch: i. Up Ahead
• A Headlong Stretch: ii. Continental Drift
• A Headlong Stretch: iii. The Twelve
• A Headlong Stretch: iv. Long Light
• A Headlong Stretch: v. Backwards Man
• A Headlong Stretch: vi. As You Were
• A Headlong Stretch: vii. Or So I Said
• A Louse Is Not A Home
• Again
• Been Alone So Long
• Candle
• Child
• Comfortable
• Crying Wolf
• Faint-Heart and the Sermon
• Ferret And Featherbird
• Fight
• Forsaken Gardens
• Four Pails
• Gog
• Happy
• I Once Wrote Some Poems
• Imperial Zeppelin
• Just Good Friends
• Lost And Found
• Magog (In Bromine Chambers)
• Man-Erg
• Material Possession
• Mediaevil
• Mirror Images
• Modern
• Mr. X (Gets Tense)
• My Experience
• My Favourite
• Nadir's Big Chance
• Narcissus (Bar & Grill)
• Nightman
• No Moon In The Water
• Nobody's Business
• None Of The Above
• Not For Keith
• Not The Man
• Nothing Comes
• Now Lover
• Now More Than Ever
• Oasis
• On The Surface
• Open your Eyes (The Locarno Song)
• Ophelia
• Other Old Clichés
• Our Oyster
• Painting By Numbers
• Palinurus (Castaway)
• Paradox Drive
• Patient
• People You Were Going To
• Personality
• Phosphorescence
• Planet Coventry
• Pompeii
• Porton Down
• Power Of Speech
• Primo on the Parapet
• Pushing Thirty
• Rain, 3 a.m.
• Ram Origami
• Re-Awakening
• Red Shift
• Reprise
• Rock and Rôle
• Rubicon
• Sci-Finance
• Seven Wonders
• Sharply Unclear
• She Wraps It Up
• Shell
• Shingle Song
• Sign
• Silver
• Since The Kids
• Sitting Targets
• Skin
• Sleep Now
• Slender Threads
• Smile
• Solitude
• Something About Ysabel's Dance
• Still In The Dark
• Still Life
• Stranger Still
• Stupid
• Summer Song (In the Autumn)
• Sun City Nightlife
• Sunshine
• Tapeworm
• Tenderness
• The Birds
• The Comet, The Course, The Tail
• The Cut
• The Future Now
• The Gift of Fire (Talk Turkey)
• The Great European Department Store
• The Great Experiment
• The Institute Of Mental Health, Burning
• The Jargon King
• The Lie (Bernini's St. Theresa)
• The Light Continent
• The Meanings Changed
• The Moebius Loop
• The Mousetrap (Caught In)
• The Noise
• The Old School Tie
• The Play's The Thing
• The Polaroid
• The Second Hand
• The Spirit
• The Tower
• The Unconscious Life
• This Book
• This Side Of The Looking Glass
• Time For A Change
• Time Heals
• Time To Burn
• Too Many Of My Yesterdays
• Traintime
• Trappings
• Two Or Three Spectres
• Under Cover Names
• Unrehearshed
• Viking
• Vision
• Vote Brand X
• What I Did
• What's it Worth?
• When Language Corrodes
• Where The Mouth Is
• Wilhelmina
• You Can't Want What You Always Get...
• You Hit Me Where I Live
• Your Word