Peter Hammill - Stumbled

Wash your hands clean,
don’t let anybody see the dirty work.
Keep those secrets
locked away from sight forever,
hidden safely where your darker side still runs berserk.

So much stored-up resentment,
all that background fallout from so long ago,
it’s still here to haunt you.
In a trunk locked in the attic
are the clothes that dressed the actions
you discarded but you can’t outgrow.
There’s a false wall in the basement
where you hide away the history you dare not put on show.

And when the hammer hits the nail upon the thumb
then the unvarnished truth is what you stumble on.

On your best behaviour,
keep on playing out the lily-white,
but you’ll always be stuck there,
going round and round in circles,
the mistakes which you repeat form up the framework
which defines your life.

You couldn’t quantify the depths you’d have to plumb
or the damage you’ve collaterally done...
still your own footprints are the tracks you stumble on.

And it’s less by design than by random occurrence
that you filled up your timer, that you built up the current
to spark the life you’ve led, the person you’ve become.
With the end in sight the excuses are all gone.

The truth is, this conclusion’s what you’ve stumbled on:
behind you lies the wreckage that you’ve stumbled from.