"The Light Continent" lyrics - PETER HAMMILL

All the fields that you've overflown are frozen,
They flow like glass down the frame in formlessness.
Only the fragile fluttering of your heart still marks you chosen,
Chosen to dare, your face defiant of the featureless.
Your face defies the featureless,
You're facing the featureless.

A horizon of light blurs the boundaries of whiteness
As the distance is shimmered into timeless brightness now.

And the slow flooding tide is begun as it's ended -
The barometer dropping and the fog descended
Down, down.

In this endless day, at this hour long-appointed,
Subterranean humming and the compass unpointed,
The compass disjointed, the compass down.

Deep in the core the heart of ice forms,
A tempo of life like that of stalagmites,
A flood of the frozen,
The flux of the blood
Aflame in antarctic white.

Any marks that you made only scratched at the surface
Only retinal image ties you into the circuit now.

In this empty expanse every shadow is shining
The indifference of nature: your significance tiny now.
Dive down.

All the fields that you've overflown are frozen,
They flow like glass down the frame in formlessness.
Only the fragile fluttering of your heart still marks you chosen,
Chosen to dare, your face defiant of the featureless.
Your face defies the featureless,
You're facing the featureless.

Timeless the day, absorbing every wavelength of the light.
Frozen in place, our footfall on the ice.
What have our shadows meant
In the light continent,
In the light continent?