Again - Peter Hammill

I stretch my hands, clutch vacant laughter

In silence and sweet, sweet pain;

Without demand, but with a longing

For what will never come again

I smell your perfume on the sheets in the morning:

It lingers like the patterns on the window after rain

A past that lives, if only for the present

But which is gone and will never come again

To your sad eyes, turned away, mine say

«Do you?

Did you?

How?»

As the darkness slides away the day

Shows what was and makes what is now

I see your picture as though it were a mirror

But there’s no part of you outside the frame

Except the change that you gave to me:

This will never come again

I am me, I was so before you

But afterwards I am not the same

You are gone and I am with you:

This will never come again