Lyrics - No More (the Submariner) by Hammill Peter

In my youth,
I played at trains: now all steam is gone.
In my dreams, brief shelter from the rain,
I try to catch the fireglow...with
Dinky
Toys,
I thought that
I was
Stirling;with cricket bat,
I say myself as
Peter
May;now, with all these images returning,
I wonder who
I am today?
As a child,
I refought the war, with plastic planesand imagination:
I sank
Tirpitz, blew up the
Mohne dam, these and more--
I was the saviour of the
Nation!
Oh!
To be the captain of a ship of war!
The pilot of a
Tempest or a
York!
To hold my trench against the
Panzer
Korps,instead of simply being one who talks,and reminisces of his fantasies,as though life was nothing but to lose...these only antecede the knowledge that, eventually,he must choose....
It's a hallmark of adulthoodthat our options diminishas our faculties for choice increase,till we choose everything and nothing,too late, at the finish.
In my youth,
I held belief: my faith and thought were strong.
But now
I'm stripped of every leaf, and it robs meof the sight of right and wrong.
Oh!
To be the son of
Che
Guevara!
One unit in the serried ranks of black!
A
Papist or an
Orangeman, a eunuch...then doubt would never cast the dagger in my back.
Oh!
To be
King
John or
Douglas
Bader,
Humphrey
Bogart or
Victor
Mature!
Which one is false and easy,which one harder?--
Of that,of this,of me
I'm really not too sure.---------------------------

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