Van Der Graaf Generator - The Emperor In His War Room

(The Emperor)

Standing in the space that holds the silent lace of night
away from you
You think that you can hold the searing, molten gold between
your fingers
but it slips through, tearing tendons as it goes,
exposing the white of a knuckle:
flesh-and-metal forming letters in the mould.

Cradling your gun, after choosing the ones you think should die;
lying on the hill, crawling over the windowsill into your
living-room
They stare out, glass-eyed aimless heads, bodies torn by vultures.
You are the man whose hands are rank with the smell of death.

Saviour of the Fallen, Protector of the Weak,
Friend of the Tall Ones, Keeper of the Peace!
Ah, but it is the only way you know.

Looking out to sea, a flattened plane of weeds which bear no living
You crush life in your fist as your heart is kissed by the lips of death
Ghosts betray you, ghosts betray you,
in the night they steal your eye from its socket
and the ball hangs fallen on your cheek.
Complaining tongues are stilled;
a thousand mouths are filled with rusting metal.
Your face a shade of green,somehow you try to speak
through all the garbage in your mouth
but it won't come out and you cannot frame the words
as your stepson throws your fame into the flames
and you are burned.

Saviour of the Fallen, Protector of the Weak,
Friend of the Tall Ones, Keeper of the Peace!
Ah, but it is the only way you know.


(The Room)

Live by sword and you shall die so,
all your power shall come to nought,
every life you take is part of your own:
death, not power, is what you've bought.

Cringing in your room as the outriders of doom
step on the threshold;
begging for your life as the impartial knife
sinks in your screaming flesh
without malice, merely taking murder's toll.
You must pay the price of hate and that price is your soul.

Live in peace or die forever in your war-room.