Faint-Heart and the Sermon [The Peel Sessions] Peter Hammill

[Verse 1]
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

[Verse 2]
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

[Bridge]
And it seems absurd, but now all I've heard
Fades in empty words and is worthlеss
As the Human Laugh rocks the cenotaph
But thе joke is half-true, and mirthless