Naked Flame - Roy Harper

The naked flames of cracking dawn come searing through with cruel scorn

To furrow wounds across each frown inside the breast of love’s sad clown

Who chases fleeting silhouettes with swollen dreams and rising sweats

Who taunts and bluffs the savage god with a broken heart and a hanging head.

I would we were but I wish in vain to have you here to hold again

My blood boils ice in deep despair but worse of all you couldn’t care

Remember when the world was ours and at our feet ten thousand stars

Who saw us then could now relate who would have guessed, this was our fate.

I’m sorry that you thought of us as painful and superfluous

But please don’t think I’m that thick skinned to want my seed in any old wind

I can’t believe we’ll just exist as figments of each others past

Where is it at to get to this, when lawyers lurk where lovers kiss?

The alter of October stands with opening arms and dripping hands

Unveiling storms, collecting skies and gathering leaves to whisper sighs

As from the pulpit summer shrinks and hope of us together sinks

As fast as all those burning lies, little … hard to memorise.

The ages pass with the flick of a thumb, love has lost and pride has won

But through old destruction flies new dawn and I rode the winds into the morn.