TheSleepwalkers

The Sleepwalkers (2005 Digital Remaster) - Van Der Graaf Generator

At night this mindless army

Ranks unbroken by dissent

Is moved into action and

Their pace does not relent

In step with great precision

These dancers of the night

Advance against the darkness

How implacable their might

Eyes undulled by moon

Their arms and legs akimbo

They walk and live

Hoping soon to surface from this limbo

Their minds

Anticipating the dawn of the day

Shall never know what's waiting

Mere insight away

- too far too soon

Senses dimmed in semi-sentience

Only wheeling through this plane

Only seeing fragmented images

Prematurely curtailed by the brain

But breathing living

Knowing in some measure at least

The soul which roots the matter of

Both Beauty and the Beast

From what tooth or claw does murder spring

From what flesh and blood does passion

Both cut through the air with

The pendulum's swing

In deadly but delicate fashion

And every range of feeling is there in the dream

And every logic's reeling in the force of the scream;

The senses sting

And though I may be dreaming and reality stalls

I only know the meaning of sight and that's all

And that's nothing

The columns of the night advance

Infectiously their cryptic dance

Gathers converts to the fold -

In time the whole raw world will

Pace these same steps

On into the same bitter end

Somnolent muster - now the dancing dead

Forsake the shelter of their secure beds

Awaken to a slumber whose depths they dread

As if the ground they tread would give way

Beneath the solemn weight of their conception

I'd search the hidden corners of all this world

Make reason of the sensory whorl

If I only had time

But soon the dream is ended

Tonight before you lay down to

The sweetness of your sleep

Do you question your surrender to

The drop from Lover's Leap

Or does the anaesthetic darkness

Take hold on its very own

Does your body rise in service with not

One dissenting groan