Lyrics Silver - Peter Hammill

Silver

You lay your plans, I take them as they come
I understand: we dance to different drums
It’s not in any schoolbook
You’re here to teach a lesson to us all…
We play by different rule-books
What you say, what you do
They’re such different things, which is true?
Now the telephone rings, Mephistopheles calling…
Forty pieces for each lie you’ve told
I hope your linings as they all unfold are silver
Once we were friends in our idealist days
Still, let’s pretend, it’s funny in a way
That now our friendship’s token
You like to say I owe you everything —
Some debts remain unspoken
Double talk, double standards
You speak with two tongues, truth’s abandoned
All life has become one-way traffic to lucre
You take your meetings on the cloth of gold
Just down the river from the lives you’ve sold for silver
The silver crossed your palm
Oh, can you see the future?
I hope you’ll know when you sold your soul
Argente, argent
All the things you’ve done will carry their own taint
And a day will come when you chorus the complaint
That your friends don’t do you fairly;
The back you turned, the shoulders that you shrugged
Now fit the blame quite squarely
What you want, what you need
Your emotional greed all-consuming
But no hearts will bleed and the coffers are empty
Yes, in the end you’d give it all away
But on the sockets of your eyes they lay the silver