Nightman Peter Hammill

[Verse 1]
At the dead of night, I woke
With the sense that my dreams were escaping
All uncannily unspoken
Like words at the tip of a foreign tongue....

[Verse 2]
As for language, I have none
To express quite what strangeness overwhelms me:
Something's changed and something tells me
To be still in the roar of the distant stars
The night's full of fire, ice and water;
By day I'll have clay in my hands

[Bridge]
The book is open at a well-thumbed mark
The odds are stacked that I'm facing
Eyes grown accustomed to light and dark
Can't catch the shadows they're chasing
Open, my heart, to the vital spark –
A disordered rhythm is racing
It's a danse macabre I'm tracing

[Instrumental Break]

[Verse 3]
As the fire feeds the flame
As the tongue finds expression in its flickering
Does each breath inform a name
To be dispersed just as soon as it's exhaled?
Was it to myself I came
Or to some other strange and parallel existence?
Oh, will I ever see tomorrow
To wake and begin it again?