I stretch my hands,
clutch vacant laughter
in silence and sweet, sweet pain;
without demand,
but with a longing
for what will never come again.
I smell your perfume
on the sheets in the morning:
it lingers like the patterns
on the window after rain,
a past that lives,
if only for the present,
but which is gone and will never come again.
To your sad eyes,
turned away, mine say
'Do you? Did you? How?'
As the darkness
slides away the day
shows what was
and makes what is now.
I see your picture
as though it were a mirror
but there's no part of you
outside the frame
except the change that you gave to me:
this will never come again.
I am me,
I was so before you,
but afterwards I am not the same.
You are gone
and I am with you:
this will never come again.
— Peter Hammill 'Again'
