Peter Hammill - The Top of the World Club

And the future spread before us like a feast,
we saw clearly to the curve of the horizon,
felt like everything we’d wanted was in reach,
all we so eagerly awaited
And the perfume on the air,
oh, I could taste it....

(Decline and fall, decline and fall
is coming to us....

And when the fall comes it will hit you pretty hard
when the fortified castle proves a house of cards
and the sweet cup of plenty’s shattered into a million shards.

Your Weltanschauung is now cut down at the core
and your self-estimation’s falling through the floor
now there’s not much still standing of the edifice by which you once swore
and which you used to adore.)

The air is thin, the air is thin,
the top of the world club’s what we’re in;
how thin the air, how thin the air,
the top of the world club isn’t there any more.
My crawling skin, my crawling skin,
what circle of hell are we fallen in,
so dread and drear, so dread and drear,
the pressure above an atmosphere, open-jawed.
All the stars are darkening,
all the stars extinguishing one by one.

Worlds we thought were ours to own
disappeared and gone,
disappeared,
disappeared.