Peter Hammill - Babel lyrics

Words upon words Stack the tower of Babel Brick on brick on straw on clay But a whispering stirs And the structure's unstable When all the scaffold's stripped away We're ever quick to aver That we are ready and able But we can't say what's coming, come what may By definition self-obsessed We strive to make ourselves plain With words that pa** the acid test With pa**ive thought in train Words upon words Fiction, folly and fable Each pregnant pause a dead giveaway... Ploughing on undeterred As the sell-bys expire on our labels Though at length we'll have little or nothing to say It would be too absurd To spend life all agaze at our navels – Oh, we've got such limited time to go on and explain So, running off at the mouth We all get carried away Uncertain when it all goes south If we mean what we say If we mean what we say...