Objects Outlive Us

Album: The Overview (2025)
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  • I incline myself to space

    There was no ghost on the moor
    No open window
    No monkey's paw

    There in the mist
    You asked me
    "Did you forget I exist?"

    I said, "Yes"
    'Cause you played
    Too hard to get

    The Buddha of the modern age
    Is barely paid minimum wage
    To dole out truth and healthy karma
    The same he gave to our forefathers
    When once we reached to touch
    The sky, now we have no need to try
    The blurred photos of ghosts of men
    Such permanence, we don't comprehend
    Slaughter the sacred cow
    To stuff our stupid mouths
    Already fit to burst through the insatiable thirst
    To kill over and over
    We interlopers, the inferior species
    Wallow in our own feces
    Gazing down at our navels and no longer able
    To find some kind of perspective
    Amongst all the invective glory
    In pathways of dopamine until time intervenes
    Rabble struck down, dementia or overcome
    Stampeding but we have no need to try

    Her shopping bag broke sending eggs and flour crashing
    Down to the ground, just like star clusters smashing
    But, no one will give her a glance
    They just shuffle on home in a trance
    The tiniest lives fill their hives up with worry
    To make it to church, well, she'll need to hurry
    When late, she will bow down contrite
    While a meteor turns out the light

    And there, in an ordinary street
    A car isn't where it would normally be
    The driver in tears, 'bout his payment arrears
    Still, nobody hears when a sun disappears
    In a galaxy afar

    First day of the new job, and he was so nervous
    The suit and the platitude, "Can I be of service?"
    His boss made him clean all the cars
    While he wondered, "Is there life on Mars?"
    And meanwhile, the stars line themselves up in order
    While we bicker on with our fences and borders
    But best not think about that
    It's better to live without facts

    And now in her old wedding bed
    A lady will dream that her husband is dead
    Of course he's alive, he'll be home around five
    Still, silence arrives, when a nebula dives
    Into our Milky Way

    The thunder and rain start, the paving stones melt
    And oddly the first spots make Orion's belt
    As you queue at the bank for an hour
    'Cause a solar flare blew out the power
    The nurse in the care home now empties a bath tub
    The water will spiral, a galaxy's vast hub
    Is draining away as we speak
    But she loses her job there next week

    And there with his first telescope
    A teenager stands full of hormones and hope
    As he squints at the night, like a painting of light
    He doesn't suppose that a black hole implodes
    In a trillion tears from now

    Back then, in time, we spoke up for the Earth
    The truth, the proof, but in our hearts the words
    We used were not to break or kill this spell
    Only, to warn, to track, the dark that fell
    And now, here we be the few that survive
    The ones who knew, look back in our hindsight
    Knowing always there would, should be, an end
    Knowing it was just a question of when
    Each of these souls, just one in a billion
    Each of the stars, just one in a trillion
    We move on through, so dead, so black, the void
    And still, back there, in dust, the Earth, destroyed

    Back then, in time, we spoke up for the Earth
    The truth, the proof, but in our hearts the words
    We used were not to break or kill this spell
    Only, to warn, to track, the dark that fell
    And now, here we be the few that survive
    The ones who knew, look back in our hindsight
    Knowing always there would, should be, an end
    Knowing it was just a question of when
    Each of these souls, just one in a billion
    Each of the stars, just one in a trillion
    We move on through, so dead, so black, the void
    And still, back there, in dust, the Earth, destroyed

    I incline myself to space

    There was no ghost on the moor
    No open window
    No monkey's paw

    There in the mist
    You asked me
    "Did you forget I exist?"

    I said, "Yes"
    'Cause you played
    Too hard to get Writer/s: Andy Partridge, Steven Wilson
    Publisher: BMG Rights Management
    Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

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