Luyện nghe bài hát Still Life

(Hammill)

Citadel to a thousand voices, now

What we become?
What have we to be?
Now, all history is reduced to the of
our
nothing can be the same:
now the are here.
At the it seemed a reasonable course
to all the force
of without the threat of death,
but soon we found that and inertia
are not negative, but all the law we know,
and dead are will and words survival.

at immunity from all age, all fear and
all end...
why do I
Our is distilled
and all familiar is now drained,
and though is maintained
it us sterile,
through the millions of years,
a laugh as close as any
living, if you claim all
that is breathing, eating, defecating,
screwing, drinking,
spewing, sleeping, sinking ever down and
and ultimately passing time
no longer has any meaning.

Take away the threat of death and all
left with is a of make-believe.
Marshal every breath and though you're
bored by endless ecstasy
it's still the ring by which you to be

to marry the girl who will you forever-
it's crazy, and
simply is not enough.

What is the and bluntest of pains,
such that my eyes never close feeling it

What despair demands an end
to all things of
If we have gained, how do we now the

What have we bargained, and what we

What have we relinquished, never even it
was

What thoughts now of fast the line,
defying and time?
we had is gone,
everything we laboured for and more
than earthly things reveals the ring
of false hope and deliverance.

But now the bed is made,
the dowry has paid:
the toothless, features of eternity
now me between the sheets
to with her withered body - my wife.
forever,
forever,
hers
in life.