Peter Hammill - All Greek

Fried up the brain
with rhetorical questions
dictionary games
and conundrums ear to ear.
When we say what we think
do we think what we're saying's
missing a link,
inconsistent in idea?

(in internal stage whispers
wordless the script
getting lost in contradictory talk...)

Losing the thread
(in a set of stage whispers)
"It's nothing"... (he said)
If I meant that it would say it all.
(Spoken, the lines are misshapen...)
Speaking my mind
but the mind that thinks out loud's not thinking straight at all.

All my ideas formed entirely without words
speechlessly, you get the picture?

ne, oxi, oxi, endax'
hai, iie, iie, redact...

All greek to me, all in double dutch phrases,
cacophony of linguistic dismay,
orotund talk and the sound of my voice is
fractured and forced;
I can't get out what I mean to say,
parroted lines all misshapen...
speaking my mind
but the mind that thinks out loud is close to blown away.

And when ideas come entirely without words
their purity is unalloyed
even to ourselves unspoken is unheard
and so we try to give them voice
but languages have all evolved to meet the needs
of every individual culture
so with every syntax that we press them to we see
their essences adulterated...

ne, oxi, oxi, endax'
hai, iie, iie, redact...