Breakthrough - Peter Hammill

The visitors find the children gone from school:

aged relations sling their guns across the desks…

there’ll be no break-time for them unless

they talk about tomorrow

as though it’s already on its way.

Amen, oh yes, they’re

waiting for the breakthroug

h in time.

The visitors hide no aces up their sleeves

and the classroom pulses to many different drums.

If only a breakthrough in time would come

there’d be some chance for the visited ones.

We could talk about tomorrow

as though we believed in that.

e could talk about it right now,

and it would come as a shock

to feel the fingernail grow on the trigger finger —

still the visitors clock us waiting for the breakthrough,

waiting for the breakthrough

with time on our hands.

(It's there all the tim