People You Were Going To - Peter Hammill

Your father has just left your mother,

gone off to live with his latest lover:

she sits there, just staring.

So you get back to your own flat

because the atmosphere in there

is so bad you can’t bear it.

And the people you were going to America with

just left on the dawn plane

without you,

without you.

The people in the downstairs flat

are no longer there now because they left

the gas tap on, they’re all dead.

So you’ve no-one left to talk to,

you just lie there in melancholy,

half-naked on your unmade bed.

And the people you were going to Africa with

just left on the Southern Star

without you,

without you.

Yes, the haze that’s been forming round your window-panes

is now protracted and poisoned

and you cannot feel a portion of the world outside.

Can you imagine the way you’d feel

if all these things had happened to you

and the doctor says you’re dying?

That is the way that I feel now

on finding that your love belongs

to someone else and not I.

My chance of heaven has just blown away

upon a passing cloud and there is nothing that I can do without you.

The people you were going to have left, gone far away

and you’re lonely.