Hypnagogue Lyrics - Current 93

I 

Behind my walls are my Cats. And behind my Cats is a Peacock singing to me of my death and yours. I said to her "In the silence of an eye, I shall smile and arise, and see someone I used to know sleeping; in her room in her bed in her body I was in Paradise." I am awake in the sound of roses and a young girl's voice. We are drowning in the approaching shadows. I am dreaming and cannot hold it. I have seen. 

(Dear Christ: the silence and the loss; we are born and fall. Dear Christ, you too are broken and lost and hanging like a Roman standard over us all.) 

II 

Behind the line of my skull that hides behind my hair and skin, I see the selfsame skull of my father, and beyond the skull of my father, the skull of my grandfather, and the skull of my great grandfather, whom I never knew. And so on this line unto the alpha and omega point at infinity. With my eye - this fire, this fly, that sees everything and smiles, and comprehends nothing, and dies - I see all around my head and that end. I have invented myself; I have created myself; I am just a form of dream English, words stretched with skin and fear. From my eyes in my skull my father observes this immense and kaleidoscopic dream. By birth I am other than this. The mosquitoes rejoice in my skin. The lizard is on the ceiling above me. The shallow water pots deny the ants routes to food. There is no silence ever. The cicadas are omnipotent sound. The kampong is dark and still. I am not what I thought I was. I am not what I seem. Most of all, I am not what I am. I thought it was the news rushing down the wires, happy in death and fashion, spinning yo-yos and clacking its jaw, raising its eyes, mimicking dogs at play. The sun shuts down, and erases birdlight. And in this stunted eclipse I saw myself, some darkness at last tenously visible, love as the sweetest thing. Al Bowlly, Jack Buchanan, sing on, dreaming of the lamps and the beautiful ladies, bowed lips packed with blood, the staged kisses trembling under the placid stars, the coffee taken with cream and scones under the Viennese Moon; whilst we are weighed, we are judged, and twist in this storm like birds over sails. 

III 

I have caught the dead again: I click my eyes 

And there they are, mercurial ghosts, formed 

And moving; so the dead do move, and shout, 

And pray, and cry, and suffer 

And the eye click on and one: the one shut 

Catches the dead. The clouds pass by. 

God hovers over us and shrieks 

We don't hear the slightest crackle 

Can't see the slightest smiles 

And we blur into our death and the second great death 

Whilst we chase chicks and dream of a paradise without wings or sorrow, Christ's tears fall over Jerusalem. The curtains are groggy with damp, and the rails, and the tracks and the tacks, and the black and the bats, and the shrivelled shrill lights trip and laugh over the weeds and the blossoms, and throats open shut and sigh. I am the moon and the sun, the rising and the setting, the first and final breaths, and the product of the stars. I am some immortal and pointless dust. 

Two bodies lie in bed for their brief moment together in eternity; the memory holds still; we watch the fireflies kiss the night and turn their backs on the Milky Way forever, as our eyes shower sweetness upon each other. 

IV 

I caught a glimpse of your eyes 

Last night in a restless dream 

Awaking out of green field blue seas stars 

Your eyes arose like the spectres of flowers 

I turned out the light and clicked fast the door 

The book fell 

I had so many thoughts, so many signs 

I made sense of nothing at all 

This green dream was unreal; the crickets sing 

Across deserts and plains the lost feast 

Whose shimmering teeth are marking the passing of time 

A cloud falls; a bird shivers and sings, its beak stained with night 

Pure gold: the dark is waiting, the darkness is hungry, 

The deep is angry, and the telephone rings on 

A film screen descends, and the silent movies play 

Buster Keaton falls and rots, as Big Ben sings and boils 

On an endless swamp; the silence is treacle thick 

And calls us to prayer: paint God with your blood 

And fill haunted women with knives and kites 

And gauges and valves and make them weep long hymns 

To gaseous and clumsy mortality whilst fish descend 

Remember, remember the burning ember 

Embedded in your chest: the soul watches TV 

And gorges itself on blood and popcorn 

Now that's what I call decay decline and hard times 

Hard times, very hard times, Mr. Lindsay, 

Hard times and winter so croool: you have stopped my watch 

At the stroke of three and call for the police 

But there's a time for tea and a time for expiring 

And the notice to quit is in the post: 

And you should know: your 

Little cow and calf is gonna die 

V 

I was awake, dreaming 

Of new dystopias to run to and hide within 

And new faces to wear 

And new bodies to inhabit 

And new lies to guzzle 

And how I loved 

The moon, and its sheets of seeds 

The moon tiding in your body 

The smell of your blood breathing 

And its taste in the sea in the south shining my feet 

Till it seemed as if they were made of dew 

With pearls of huge beauty 

Whilst your mouselike breath was 

The hand upon my clock 

And one each breath I came nearer 

To my silly and shining end 

VI 

All long summer long 

Under the fly-dance and the thumbthick twilight 

The thought of you smiling 

And laughing with children 

Crippled me 

Typecast and forlorn 

Smudged ghost gorgeous: 

There is a love so profound 

So broken and risen: 

Torment, black valley 

Slumbering between our lips 

And the lies we thoughtlessly wove 

I knew your essence once 

At our time when the sunset and I touched you 

In the slanting room, just south of the past 

Between your belly and thighs: 

This was a temporary deceitful paradise. 

Lost as we created it 

And destroyed in tasting 

So much blood is lacking now 

I dreamt for your bit lips, haunted like waves 

In the ecstatic arch of evening: 

You and the night, you and the mountain 

You and tomorrow, you and the tomorrow: 

Stay away: stay away: stay away: 

What we want we cannot have 

And wanting all the more 

I slept on words and lines and texts 

Of useless want, staring at the time 

And finally lost you finally finally lost you finally 

As the moon swept down and wept. 

VII 

Good morning: How are you? 

I have called to say 

I saw you dreaming of conquests 

Of large wars, bigger walls: 

But: 

I am pleased to say: 

Your houses are dead 

Your children are full of flame 

The horses are dead and the butterflies fall 

God is abroad 

The wind is in the air 

And from the depths 

I point at us all 

Good morning 

The clouds of smoke arise 

Arise arise full of eyes of eyes 

Your sons are suffocating their sisters 

And painting eyes on the walls 

With tongues dipped in blood 

Arise arise full of eyes of eyes 

And from the depths 

I call to us all 

Good morning 

I have seen the face that lies 

I have seen the lips that smile 

With false smiles arise arise 

Look look: I have read a book a book 

That has spelt out the future 

And from the depths 

I see a king arise arise 

With on his forehead many eyes eyes 

And he is on a horse a horse a horse 

With a train of smoke behind its hooves 

And I must say from my depths 

I have seen a story emerge from a cloud of wings 

Arise arise from eyes from eyes 

And a number is sss6een is sss6een is sss6een 

From the depths beauty 

And from the depths loss 

From the depths from the depths 

I have called and added and have seen you all 

Your children are dead and waiting for you 

VIII 

The sun has already just set 

You said 

And behind it the moondfaced disc 

Blue; pearl; white: opaline mouth 

Sack of hopes, of dreams, of fur 

Catching the moths that 

Trail dust in the dusk 

Caused you to open alone and sign 

Goodbye to us all in the white room 

In the eyewhite, skullwhite room 

In the bed, 

Amongst the dead: 

Santa Rita, ora pro nobis 

I looked at you 

And touched the earth 

Hid under concrete and cruelty 

Credo quia impossibile est 

That the dead rise, rise, rise 

And in the blink, in the twink 

Of your eye, Santa Rita, 

I saw you dart, dark as an eclipse 

Whilst the twilight made a rainbow 

All around your passing 

And I saw and was saved 

IX 

In dream: 

You are there 

As the tip of the tongue collapses towards the teeth 

And the waters of dream mass around 

You are there: You are there 

Suddenly and silently 

You are the force of the wave 

And birds, all birds, reel in the distance 

Their face at dawn 

Where profound and terrible armies surge 

And foreign towns collapse under the weight of prophesied terrors 

All the dead advance, great armies, 

Martyrs for the Blood, the Sign, the Wound 

And time 

The animals all sorted Fishes too 

I have eaten judge me at 

God's right hand 

And the cats that arise from the dirt and the filth 

And the starving and the scabby 

The tortured the tortured the tortured 

I see them at night before I drift 

During my sleep they gambol and play 

And chase Balls or Children or Giants 

They play cards and click their eyes 

They laugh, and take tea at six 

They laugh as they tumble 

And have TEETH the size of cloudbursts 

And grip us and take us down to the Deep 

And we sigh and expire and 

seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee 

silenceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee 

sssssssssmilliiiiiiiiiiiiinggggggggggggggg 

I cannot bear this all any more. Not enough silence. But in the desert I sometimes see ships and hear the black diamond express near the station before mine. Caesar: where are you going? He said to me, grinning: 

You will reach the Kingdom 

With a bow and a sweep 

You will reach the Kingdom 

I have caught and tortured Time 

And I ARISE 

We are surrounded for the last 2000 years by a VAST EMPIRE OF DEATH and EMPIRE OF BLOOD: this was all after the Crucifixion: 

i uflow tou yeou: plhrhw xaritow kai elhyeiaw. 

So try to remove whatever may dream or spill or seed or spread on your breath: 

Or your silence will seep into the something you wished to avoid 

It will be seen some fine day, all right, yes, all right: 

"I will make you mine,", just you and I, whilst our breaths pass between us and spiral off to mausoleums of desires and hopes. 

When my friends pass into the great goodbye before my eyes 

And I too move with them: without sound, just words 

Left floating through the streets, and the ears: 

And the souls of the people who were with me: I was in them 

And they were in me. And off they go, a pint in their hands, 

A glint in their eye, and I see tambourines drearily clapping out 

The pavine carnival march: "now you see'em, now you don't" 

I did not want the world to stop; and I have seen it rush past me 

As a ferocious fury, but such angelic fury, and I was taking the Temperature of a thousand changes of mind: I might take you now, but perhaps I shall wait till the postman comes for toast and - With notes of the obsequies at 12 - 

With your teeth on edge at the faint sound of the swans charging at the trees that you built swings on and killed under and dreamt under 

With your beloved in that first and last virginal Summer 

When you entered this world of blood and belief 

And coupled under the Tropical Sun 

And gave birth to children in your cries 

I am born to die. 

I am born to die. 

I am born to die. 

"Jesus snorted; he was moved to his guts;" and the dust was everywhere, and Pilate arose in his fury. You have a boat waiting, friend, and it is time to board: all aboard, all aboard. "We don't save the living here." (The cyclamen opens at evening, and the world was gentle tonight; summery, hints of rose and rouge in the sky in the north over the dome of the glassgreenhouse.) Pilate arose. And washed his hands. I washed my hands; I cleared dust of them; I can see specks of blood laughing upon them. Pilate washes his hands. He arose and washed his hands. And the sword fell. 

Meanwhile, in the house with nothing at home: in the cafe with plates of liver and kidneys and offal; in the slaughterhouse near the schoolyard; in the damaged rooms of the schoold ma'am at rest; in the fallen arches of the brilliant silence, coloured at dawn, and twilit by the twittering of birds; in the moon shining down on the shrew on my step; at the freshly cut grass; at the sound of the bell making toast or tea or time buzz by with loud whoops of shouting "I am here I am there; catch me if you can, catch me if you dare". At all th4ese moments, and all these daydreams, and all our breaths which dream idly into deaths, deaths: at all these deaths, I remember you beautiful with love and fear with swooping hair biting the words our of your mind, and delivering them to me hating to pass the time, which swept by, as proud as a ghost, whilst we tossed coins to see who would disappear first.