"Gone Ahead" lyrics - PETER HAMMILL

We bite off our tongues
While chewing the fat;
Though the fire in our lungs is celestial
Our delivery falls flat.
Would a time come to be silent?
Oh, we never spoke of that.

We talked out of turn
In the school of hard knocks;
Although willing to learn from experience
It still comes as a shock
When the time comes to be silent...
One by one the jaws all drop.

The voice is still clear in my head;
It's the last word in monologue...
Close-up, interior, night.

Mmm...

The voices alive in my head
Are all tongue-tied to silence now.

It's the darkest of moods,
It's the cruellest of jokes
That this facility I used, once so fluent,
Is cut out at a stroke.
And the time came to be silent
As the core connection broke...
Absurd ineloquence,
My own words on which I choke.

Swallowing deep on the thread,
So much I'm losing now,
So many things left unsaid
And the voice I've been using is
Gone ahead.