Faint-heart And The Sermon Lyrics - Hammill Peter

With my face drained of colour 

and my brain of blood 

like Billy Budd 

I'm lashed to the grating; 

with senses growing duller 

and with quaking heart 

I make a start 

at temperature equating 

and my lungs suck useless air. 

Like paraplegic dancers 

in formation team 

my understanding seems 

hidebound in its movements, 

contemplating answers 

that could break my bonds-- 

to be half wrong 

would be, in me, improvement... 

but my comprehensive faculties are impaired. 

And it seems absurd, but now all I've heard 

fades in empty words and is worthless 

as the Human Laugh rocks the cenotaph 

but the joke is half-true, and mirthless. 

Trying to trace a reason 

from the spinning words 

but all I've heard 

seem at odds with their meanings, 

phonetically pleasing 

but delivered in such haste 

that in their place 

my mind commences screaming. 

On the verge of belief I crash onto the reef 

and a cynical thief steals my senses, 

so I cling to the pew with dimensions askew, 

and recognition refuses present tenses. 

All the lives 

of the saints demonstrate that my faint 

is a minor complaint, but the end is 

nowhere in sight, 

why can't I find me a way to go? 

I don't want to die in the nave, 

but I know it may be with me some day 

so I've got to find a way I can save up 

my energies, and find a cause to pray 

so something for something 

to which I can give my creed... 

I'd gladly succumb to the wave, 

if I thought the water taught a way to light; 

I'd gladly succumb--I'm not brave, 

and it's easy to believe what the preacher says 

except for the conflict raging between my head 

and my brain. 

I don't want to die, but just the same-- 

some day.... 

Waiting for that moment 

that I know will come 

when I'll have to run 

and find another sermon... 

Everyman and Norman 

and the talking priest-- 

still, I am at least 

holding all the doors open. 

Inside me all outside is shared. 

As the cracked bells peal it all seems unreal 

but the seventh seal stays unbroken 

and the Offertory plate tenders no escape-- 

still I refuse to scrape up a token 

of esteem for these false 

alleyways of the course; 

I must try to divorce sense from sensing. 

Tell me again, 

tell me the way to go. 

So when I talk to myself 

although I take good care to listen 

my heart grows ever more faint-- 

there's something missing?