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.
So you 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,
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,
without you.
Yes, the haze that’s been forming round your window-panes
is now 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.
The people you were going to have left, gone far away
and you’re lonely.