Patience
Album - 1983 - Debaser id 255778

Along the tracks the wires are humming
in bursts of code like far-off drums.
Fathering the message:
further up the line someone's shouting
down the passage of time.

The corridor restrains the window,
no view without the eye within.
Bold upon the threshold
but holding on the line
we're shouting down the passage of time.

Relatives speak on the phone, on the train,
talking before they have thought to explain;
voices pitched wildly on tracks in the night
can't pick the pace up...
oh let there be light!
How light becomes the soul.

You know yourself the centre of attention,
you see yourself the locus of event.
I'm sorry if it's painful quarrying the lime,
stage centre,
shouting down the passage of time.

The corridor retains its shadows,
its secrets compartmentalised.
Damping down on ambience,
clamp the teeth and grind,
shouting down the passage of time.

What's there to see or make clear?
What's there to know
when the voice is right here?
What's there to promise or vow?
What's to believe, when the time is right now?

Relatives spoke on the phone, on the train,
talking before they had sought to refrain;
voices projected, spears in mid-flight
frozen forever.... oh let there be light!

A system in the making,
self-healing for the blind,
sitting in the waiting-room
of the patient mind;
raging at the illness
when the rage may be its cause,
the purpose of the will is lost
in the search for an escape clause,
in the search for an escape clause.

Fatal convalescence,
the wound becomes a weal;
the poison is in essence just
the virus of the real.
But there's sympathetic healing,
the power of the soul bandages,
concealing all that we can't control,
all that we can't control.

Waiting for the doctor to come.
Waiting for the doctor to come.
Waiting for the doctor to come.
Waiting for the doctor to come.

A system in the making,
self-healing for the blind,
sitting in the waiting-room
of the patient mind...
But there isn't any answer
the consciousness can quote
when the loaded dice of chance are there,
rattling in the throat,
rattling in the throat.

Waiting for the doctor to come.
Waiting for the doctor to come.
Waiting for the doctor to come.
Waiting for the doctor to come.

You put your faith in others;
the fear could not be worse,
but Nature's not your mother now,
just your suckling nurse.
There isn't any doctor,
there isn't any cure...
That might come as a shock to you,
but can you really be so sure?
Can you really be so sure?

Can you really be sure?