The Siren Song - Van Der Graaf Generator

Letters in pencil, some of them as heavy as lead

As dated as carbon, as black as coal, but burning as red

Clues faintly stencilled: the message, though leeched, is unbled

As secret as marble — as young, as old, as living, as dead

And always that laugh

That comes as though it’s from pain:

Though I’m lashed to the mast

Still it hammers round my brain

Laughter in the backbone

Laughter impossibly wise

That same laughter that comes

Every time I flash on that look in your eyes

Which whispers of a black zone

Which’ll mock all my credos as lies

Where all logic is done

And time will smash every theory I devise

And the hour-glass is shattered

Only by the magic of your touch

Where nothing really matters…

No, Nothing matters very much!

So the siren song runs through the ages

And it courses through my veins like champagne;

And with all the sweet kisses of addiction

It’s calling me to break my bonds again

Future memory exploding like shrapnel

Some splinters escape on my tongue

Some of them scar comprehension…

Beneath the scab they burn, but the wound becomes numb

And always the song draws me forward

Rejoicing in the search and the prayer

Bored with all but the mad, the strange

The freak, the impossible dare

Still your laugh chills my marrow

Till I embrace it on my knees…

Oh, when the mast becomes a flagpole

What becomes of me?

What becomes, oh, what becomes of me?