People You Were Going To

Your father has just left your mother,
gone off to live with his latest lover:
she sits there, just staring.
You've got to get back to your own flat
because the atmosphere in there is
so bad you can't bear it.
And the people you were going to America with
just left on the dawn 'plane
without you.

The people in the downstairs flat
are no longer there now, because they
left the gas tap on: they're all dead.
So you've no-one left to talk to,
you just lie there, in melancholy,
half-naked on your unmade bed.
And the people you were going to Africa with
just left on the Southern Star
without you.

Now the haze that's been forming
round your window-panes
is protracted and poisoned,
and you cannot feel a portion
of the world outside.

Can you imagine the way you'd feel
if all these things had happened to you
and the doctor says you're dying?
That is the way that I feel now
on finding that your love belongs
to someone else, and not I...
My chance of heaven has just blown away
upon a passing cloud, and there is nothing
that I can do without you.