Scorched Earth - Van Der Graaf Generator

Just one crazy moment while the dice are cast

He looks into the future and remembers what is past

Wonders what he’s doing on this battlefield

Shrugs to his shadow, impatient, too proud yet to kneel

In his wake he leaves scorched earth and work in vain;

Smoke drifts up behind him — he is free again

Free to run before the onslaught of a deadly foe

Leaving nothing fit for pillage, hardly leaving home

It’s far too late to turn, unless it’s to stone

Charging madly forward, tracks across the snow;

Wind screams madness to him, ever on he goes

Leaving spoor to mark his passage, trace his weary climb

Cross the moor and make the headland —

Stumbling, wayward, blind

In the end his footprints extend as one single line

This latest exponent of heresy is goaded into an attack

Persuaded to charge at his enemy

Too late, he knows it is

Too late now to turn back, too soon by far to falter

The past sits uneasily at his rear

He’s walking right into the trap

Surrounded, but striving through will and fear

Ahead of him he knows there waits an ambuscade

But the dice slip through his fingers

And he’s living from day to day

Carrying his world around upon his back

Leaving nothing behind but the tell-tale of his track

He will not be hostage, he will not be slave

No snare of past can trap him, though the future may

Still he runs and burns behind him in advanced retreat;

Still his life remains unfettered — he denies defeat

It’s far too late to turn, unless it’s to stone

Leave the past to burn — at least that’s been his own

Scorched earth, that’s all that’s left when he’s done;

Holding nothing but beholden to no-one

Claiming nothing, out of no false pride, he survives

Snow tracks are all that’s left to be seen

Of a man who entered the course of a dream

Claiming nothing but the life he’s known

— this, at least, has been his own