| Pretty keen — yes, my hobby keeps me busy;
|
| And if I talk to myself, what’s the crime?
|
| In the darkroom I am a dealer in space and time…
|
| When all memory is mellowed,
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| When the photograph is yellowed,
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| Still it never lies.
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| There you are, your eyes laced with secret pleasure,
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| Saying that you’re on the way to change,
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| Devouring in inordinate measure
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| Every diversion that’s arranged.
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| For every appetite, a cruel attraction,
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| But there’s a panic in your actions;
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| Oh, I never saw you look so strange.
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| Fixing memory chemically,
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| Holding time on the stop-clock,
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| Hanging back from that last frame
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| Just in case it didn’t show you
|
| In the way I used to know you…
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| I thought you’d always stay the same.
|
| (But you won’t.)
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| The red light, the silver, the black and the bromide;
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| The silence, the waiting for overview…
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| The past seems under-exposed, low tide,
|
| But still the images ghost through.
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| And you’re there in the bath,
|
| Which is all this has led to,
|
| And I can’t say your path
|
| Is a right one to choose…
|
| But then
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| I only have a negative of you. |