Lyrics Again - Peter Hammill

Again

I stretch my hands, clutch vacant laughter
In silence and sweet, sweet pain;
Without demand, but with a longing
For what will never come again
I smell your perfume on the sheets in the morning:
It lingers like the patterns on the window after rain
A past that lives, if only for the present
But which is gone and will never come again
To your sad eyes, turned away, mine say
«Do you?
Did you?
How?»
As the darkness slides away the day
Shows what was and makes what is now
I see your picture as though it were a mirror
But there’s no part of you outside the frame
Except the change that you gave to me:
This will never come again
I am me, I was so before you
But afterwards I am not the same
You are gone and I am with you:
This will never come again