"Legend" lyrics - ROY HARPER

ROY HARPER
"Legend"

I heard the song birds singing in the trees above my bed
In the valley of the shadow of the sea of living dead
I see the same old smells aboard my ship of shapelessness
Meandering suspended in amorphous tastelessness

I hear the happy people striking down their matchless road
The false teeth and the cologne partly sharing half the load
I know I cannot ask them so I leave their eyes to say
I know the way to Mount Street, but I just don't know the way
I see the hollow buildings hanging in the winter sun
Throwing empty shadows that hide the hollow men
The world just isn't real it's built on endless timeless time
On land marks in the desert wastes of multicoloured crime

The maps stuck in the tube trains will tell you where're you going
They'll also tell you pratically everything worth knowing
So if anybody asks me I'd say "take a few salt sodas"
If you don't you stand the dirty chance of dying stone cold sober

And as I hear you breathing life's last distant compliment
I know I can't have said much of what I really ment
The sky desolates the sky and the snowflakes face to face
And everything is just everything because everything just is