(A Belated) Invite to Eternity - Stornoway

It was late last night

And all the band were sleeping

It was late last night

I was listening to

To the generators humming

To the tent-zipping drunk

Quipping, guy-rope tripping

And in the gathering dew

I was lucid as a floodlight

I was thinking of you

But now I’m back here before you

You can see me shaking

Cos in that moment I knew

I just knew, I just knew, I just knew

Forty seasons have flown

Since I first sat down beside you

In a crowd on our own

And how one person could thrill me

Occupy me and fulfill me

I could never have known

I could never have known

How in the first of our autumns

We’d be falling so steeply

We could share so completely

How in the third of our summers

When you first tried to leave me

You could cut me so deeply

I could never have known

And on my wilderness journeys

With your compass still in me

All the shelters were empty

Through the longest of winters

When I called you downriver

But you gave me no answer

And I feared for my mind

Until the first signs of springtime

You were sick and I saw you

And how much you’d missed me

Now in our eleventh autumn

You are blonde from the summer

And I’m back here before you

And you see me shaking

Will you go with me, my love?

From here together

From this quiet rented house

Will you go with me, my love?

To face together

Every rise and every slow decline

Will you go with me

Through dream and fantasy?

Through the open fields

And tangled valleys

Will you go with me

Through grief and ecstasy?

And every shade between

The cold morning stars

And the deep blue sea