Still Life - Peter Hammill

Citadel reverberates to a thousand voices, now\nDumb:\nWhat have we become?\nWhat have we chosen to be?\nNow, all history is reduced to the syllables of Our name-\nNothing can ever be the same:\nNow the Immortals are here.\nAt the time it seemed a reasonable course\nTo harness all the force\nOf life without the threat of death,\nBut soon we found that boredom and inertia\nAre not negative, but all the law we know,\nAnd dead are will and words like survival.\nArrival at immunity from all age, all fear and\nAll end…\nWhy do I pretend?\nOur essence is distilled\nAnd all familiar taste is now drained,\nAnd though purity is maintained\nIt leaves us sterile,\nLiving through the millions of years,\nA laugh as close as any tear;\nLiving, if you claim that all\nThat entails is breathing, eating, defecating,\nScrewing, drinking,\nSpewing, sleeping, sinking ever down and down\nAnd ultimately passing away time\nWhich no longer has any meaning.\nTake away the threat of death and all you’re\nLeft with is a round of make-believe.\nMarshal every sullen breath and though you’re\nUltimately bored by endless ecstasy\nIt’s still the ring by which you hope to be Engaged\nTo marry the girl who will give you forever-\nIt’s crazy, and plainly\nThat simply is not enough.\nWhat is the dullest and bluntest of pains,\nSuch that my eyes never close without feeling it There?\nWhat abject despair demands an end\nTo all things of infinity?\nIf we have gained, how do we now meet the\nCost?\nWhat have we bargained, and what have we Lost?\nWhat have we relinquished, never even knowing it Was there?\nWhat thoughts now of holding fast the line,\nDefying death and time?\nEverything we had is gone,\nEverything we laboured for and favoured more\nThan earthly things reveals the hollow ring\nOf false hope and false deliverance.\nBut now the nuptial bed is made,\nThe dowry has been paid:\nThe toothless, haggard features of eternity\nNow welcome me between the sheets\nTo couple with her withered body — my wife.\nHers forever,\nHers forever,\nHers forever\nIn still life.