Time Passages

Time Passages

It was late in December, the sky turned to snow
All round the day was going down slow
Night like a river beginning to flow
I felt the beat of my mind go
Drifting into time passages
Years go falling in the fading light
Time passages
Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight

Well I'm not the kind to live in the past
The years run too short and the days too fast
The things you lean on are the things that don't last
Well it's just now and then my line gets cast into these
Time passages
There's something back here that you left behind
Oh time passages
Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight

Hear the echoes and feel yourself starting to turn
Don't know why you should feel
That there's something to learn
It's just a game that you play

Well the picture is changing
Now you're part of a crowd
They're laughing at something
And the music's loud
A girl comes towards you
You once used to know
You reach out your hand
But you're all alone, in these
Time passages
I know you're in there, you're just out of sight
Time passages
Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight

Valentina Way

Find another lover tomorrow
Go find another lover today
You've been so long on lonely street
That you're surely falling into decay
It's time to reconstruct yourself
Time to test the water again
Well it's sad to see
It's a tragedy
That you're wasting away
Look around ... tell me
Is it really worth the price
That you pay
On Valentina Way

I don't think she's ready to listen
I don't think she wants to come back
The atmosphere's too cold in here
To attract a butterfly like that
I think she took the boat-train out
Maybe caught the night express
She's got devious lies
And chameleon eyes
And she can't care less
Oh, buy yourself a ticket
On anything leaving today
From Valentina Way

Oh the rain comes down
And shines up the stars
Oh, the night steps out
In streetlights and bars
To the sounds of guitars
Listen

Life In Dark Water

Oh come away from the day, here I stay
Living on the bottom of the sea
Down metal snake corridors steely grey
Engines hum for nobody but me
No sound comes from the sea above me
No messages crackles through the radio leads
They'll never know, never no never
How strange life in dark water can be

Oh mariners spare a thought when you pass
Those who live the submarine life
Far in the deep sonar eyes never sleep
Hiding like a shadow in the night
Jet planes nose through the clouds above me
They look for radar traces of me to see
They'll never know, never no never
How strange life in dark water can be

Wonder what the stars look like
Coming out tonight
Tell my girl she must be strong
She sits and waits all night long
Just looking for a better day
She'll have to find another way to go

No memory, tell me what's wrong with me
Why am I alone here with no rest
And now the name of the ship's not the same
How long has it been "Marie Celeste?"
Now there's nobody from the crew left
Five hundred years supply of food just for me

They'll never know, never no never
How strange life in dark water can be

A Man For All Seasons

What if you reached the age of reason
Only to find there was no reprieve
Would you still be a man for all seasons?
Or would you just have to leave
We measure our days out
In steps of uncertainty
Not turning to see how we've come
And peer down the highway
From here to eternity
And reach out for love on the run
While the man for all seasons
Is lost behind the sun

Henry Plantagenet still looks for someone
To bring good news in his hour of doubt
While Thomas More waits in the Tower of London
Watching the sands running out
And measures the hours out
From here to oblivion
In actions that can't be undone
A sailor through the darkness
He scans the meridian
And caught by the first rays of dawn
The man for all seasons
Is lost beneath the storm

And I should know by now
I should know by now
I hear them call it out all around
Oh, they go
There's nothing to believe in
Hear them,
Just daydreams, deceiving
They'll just let you down

What if you reached the age of reason
Only to find there was no reprieve
Would you still be a man for all seasons?
Or would you just disbelieve?

We measure our gains out in luck and coincidence
Lanterns to turn back the night
And put our defeats down to chance or experience
And try once again for the light
Some wait for the waters of fortune to cover them
Some just see the tides of ill chance running over them

Some call on Jehovah
Some cry out to Allah
Some wait for the boats that still row to Valhallah
Well, you should try to accept what the fates are unfolding
While some say they're sure where the blame should be falling
You look round for maybe a chance of forestalling
Bot too soon its over and done
And the man for all seasons
Is lost behind the sun

Almost Lucy

Lucy worked a different club every day
And though she put her mind to it
Her heart was never in it
She stayed around just long enough to get paid
She won't pass the time with you
She can't stay a minute
And all these changing faces never bothered her at all
That just existed like a back-drop
Or a pattern on the wall
Lucy looks like someone who is waiting for a call
She knows will come
But no-one else can hear at all

Lucy finds the dressing room and the bar
Hangs her clothes up
Hopes tonight the contract won't be broken
Well, they kick you round so much when you're not a star
Make you play all night just for a pittance or a token
But all these imperfections never bothered her at all
She says it sharpens your perception
When your back's against the wall
There's something that enables her to rise above it all
To shrug it off, just when it seems to go too far

I think you almost
Feel the pain coming on inside
I think you almost
Feel it now and you don't know why
You don't know why

The last time that I saw her
She had given up the chase
Moved away to California
Got a suntan on her face
She says that life was just another time, another space
It's over now, she learned a lot
It's not a wasteI think you almost
Feel the pain coming on inside
I think you almost
Feel it now and you don't know why

I think you almost
Feel yourself reaching out inside
I think you almost
Feel it now and you don't know why
Don't know why

The Palace Of Versailles

The wands of smoke are rising
From the walls of the Bastille
And through the streets of Paris
Runs a sense of the unreal

The Kings have all departed
There servants are nowhere
We burned out their mansions
In the name of Robespierre

And still we wait
To see the day begin
Our time is wasting in the wind
Wondering why
Wondering why, it echoes
Through the lonely palace of Versailles

Inside the midnight councils
The lamps are burning low
On you sit and talk all through the night
But there's just no place to go

And Bonaparte is coming
With his army from the south
Marat your days are numbered
And we live hand to mouth

While we wait
To see the day begin
Our time is wasting in the wind
Wondering why
Wondering why, it echoes
Through the lonely palace of Versailles

The ghost of revolution
Still prowls the Paris streets
Down all the restless centuries
It wonders incomplete

It speaks inside the cheap red wine
Of cafe summer nights
Its red and amber voices
Call the cars at traffic lights

Why do you wait
To see the day begin
Your time is wasting in the wind
Wondering why
Wondering why, it echoes
Through the lonely palace of Versailles

Wondering why, it echoes
Through the lonely palace of Versailles

Timeless Skies

While travelling northwards
On a back country lane
I came on the village
Where first I grew
And stopped to climb up
The hill once again
Looking down from the tracks
To the grey slate roofs

I watched the village moving
As the day went slowly by
In the field we lay here
Lovers' footsteps went by
In the fields we lay here
My very first love and I
Under timeless arcadian skies
Under timeless arcadian skies

The old canal lies
Sleeping under the sky
The barges are gone to a lost decade
On overgrown banks here
Lovers' footsteps went by
Long before ever the roads were made
And in our turn we passed here
And carved our names on trees
As the days washed by like
Waves of an endless sea
Under timeless arcadian skies
Under timeless arcadian skies

Time runs through your fingers
You never hold till its gone
Some fragments just linger with you
Like snow in the spring hanging on

I left the village behind in the night
To fade like a sail in the darkening seas
The shifts and changes in the patterns of life
Will weather it more that the centuries
And in another village in a far off foreign land
The new day breaks out opening up its hand
And the sun has the moon in his eyes
As he wanders the timeless skies

Song On The Radio

I was making my way through the wasteland
The road into town passes through
I was changing the radio stations
With my mind on you
Oh your friends call you "Lily Paloma"
But that's not the way that you are
It's too much of a gentle misnomer
For a shooting star

But you and me baby
I saw you there
Straight away I knew
There's really no hiding
I'll tell you right now
What we're gonna do
We'll go collecting the days
Putting the moments away
You're on my mind like a
Song on the Radio

I remember the first time I saw you
Alone in the dark with a drink
With a candle flame burning before you
And your thoughts closed in
You were staring out into the distance
Not seeming to hear what I said
Why did you put up such resistance
Like all the lights are red'

Cause you and me baby
I saw you there
Straight away I knew
There's really no hiding
I'll tell you right now
What we're gonna do
We'll go collecting the days
Putting the moments away
You're on my mind like a
Song on the Radio

I don't know what it was that was painful
But sometimes it's there in your face
There are times when you just look disdainful
Of the human race
Ah, but then on the wings of emotion
We circle each other in flight
Till together we roll like the ocean
In its bed at night'

End Of The Day

And in the evening when the day goes down
She leaves the bright house lights
Stands and watches with her coat pulled around
At torches light the western skies

Sometimes she thinks she knows him just too well
Other times not much at all
They live their lives in some familiar spell
And catch each other when they fall

Nothing lasts, well she knows, try to hang on
When it's gone, you'll be burned
Fashions and friends come and go
Everyone travels that road in their turn

She wants to run out where the day meets the night
Far beyond these midwest farms
But she'll be with him till the day she finds
A stranger lying in her arms