THE FUTURE First memory of childhood Back to the Summer garden Kick the ball in the borders See the man through the window What you see couldn’t harm you As long as you didn’t tell no-one Summer’s come to haunt you Back when the grass is longer And I look to the sky And I think of the future. And I look to the sky And I think of the future Then it stops and I rewind I rewind back and I’m Ancient Anglo Saxon farming the land Rough itching Hessian. The butterflies in the bivouac And the river’s blue in the Springtime Caught a salmon out on the ridge. Food for all the family. And I look to the sky And I think of the future. And I look to the sky And I think of the future Now caught on the camera It’s your life - do you take it? A girl you knew at sixteen She’s mother of six and works in a canteen You never forgot the boredom The glorious teenage boredom You’d walk her home in twilight Deep tongues on the doorstep. And I look to the sky And I think of the future. And I look to the sky And I think about my future Thought they’d caught the cancer Good you got there early The deep smell of chlorine Surely gonna get better Then they took her away And no-one mentions the sparrows Peck away at the concrete Out in the frozen car park And I look to the sky And I think of the future. And I look to the sky And I think of the future The travellers had nothing Except what they stood in Legs as thin as a pelican And skin baked and weary Where do you come from? And what bad things happened to you? Where will you go in the morning? We cannot let you stay here. And I look to the sky And I think of the future. And I look to the sky And I think of the future. By the time I was forty I’d drank my weight in gin and rum I tried to charm you With drugs and tarnished silver There’s nothing in the winter The child was aborted. By the time you were free it was over At the end of my bed is a mirror And I look to the sky And I think of the future. And I look to the sky And I think of the future Silence makes me happy Stops me from screaming A knock on the door is a worry Trading on my deathwish Would you buy a trinket? Sir, it will bring you luck in the end. Do I look like I need it? I hand over the money. And I look to the sky And I think of the future. And I look to the sky And I think of the future