Of Kith and Kin Peter Hammill (Ft. Gary Lucas)

From a distance the coast looks clear...
Drawing closer, I choke the tears back
So many stories have unravelled down the years
And what remains, what's left before me
Is the pricking of the thumbs, the needles and pins...
The thinning-out begins
Of kith and kin

Time and tide, all that's washed away
Empty postures and lost connections
To memory's echoes, in the end all that endure
Are single words and gestures
All the stories we've served grow serially thin:
The walls are falling in
On kith and kin

Witness to the times
Which one of us survives?

Scraped-out pages of scribbled scrawl
Blunted nibs as the devil drives us
While mere survival makes a mockery of us all
Until the last one standing
Cracks the code that we're all carrying within
Imprinted on the skin
Of kith and kin