(No More) The Sub Mariner - Peter Hammill

In my youth, I played at trains: now all steam is gone

In my dreams, brief shelter from the rain

I try to catch the fireglow…

With Dinky Toys, I thought that I was Stirling

With cricket bat, I saw myself as Peter May;

Now, with all these images returning

I wonder who I am today?

As a child, I refought the war

With plastic planes and imagination:

I sank Tirpitz, blew up the Mohne dam, all these and more

I was the saviour of the Nation!

Oh!

To be the captain of a ship of war!

The pilot of a Tempest or a York!

To hold my trench against the Panzer Korps

Instead of simply being one who talks

And reminisces of his fantasies

As though life was nothing but to lose…

These only antecede the knowledge that, eventually

He must choose

It’s a hallmark of adulthood

That our options diminish

As our faculties for choice increase

Till we choose everything and nothing

Too late, at the finish

In my youth, I held belief: my faith and thought were strong

But now I’m stripped of every leaf

And it robs me of the sight of right and wrong

Oh!

To be the son of Che Guevara!

One unit in the serried ranks of black!

A Papist or an Orangeman, a eunuch…

Then doubt would never cast the dagger in my back

Oh!

To be King John or Douglas Bader

Humphrey Bogart or Victor Mature!

Which one is false and easy

Which one harder?

Of that

Of this

Of me

I’m really not too sure