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I woke without warning and fell from my dreaming.
The sun smiled "Good morning." The city was screaming.
I wandered outside; my feet showed me where.
I followed the tide as it flowed through the square.
I met Mr. Blackwell, a friend of long standing,
Who sits at a desk in the row next to mine.
He nodded and said, "What a day for a walk!
We're bound for the beach, and the weather is fine."
The Lemmings are marching
Oh hear them, they're singing.
Their song, it will rise to the sky-high.
The Lemmings are marching
Oh hear the waves crashing
I don't think I'll see you tomorrow.
I saw men of means with their shining young families
And old men in wheelchairs and babies in arms.
They laughed as we walked with a festival sound
They started to dance at the edge of the town.
The beach became long with the holiday gathering
All splashing and calling for Blackwell to come
He said, "It's been nice, but I really must go."
And he turned, and he ran, and he kicked up the foam.
The Lemmings are marching
Oh hear them, they're singing.
Their anthem will rise to the sky-high.
The Lemmings are marching
Oh hear the waves crashing
I don't think I'll see you tomorrow.
I waited till evening, the beach was deserted.
Occasional bubbles still danced on the waves.
I looked all around, found no one else there.
So I rolled up my trousers and went for a walk.
F/67 - Cazenove Street
Richard Griggs
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This song was inspired
by a science fiction story (I believe the 1957 "Lemmings" by
Richard Matheson) that I found in an anthology sometime in the 1960s.
If anyone can confirm the Matheson connection I'd be grateful.
The order of events is pretty much as I found
it, though the name Blackwell is my own selection (being suitably "deep"
and "dark"). The image of his sitting "at a desk in the
row next to mine" is certainly a reference to my time in the Aerodynamic
Performance section of Douglas Aircraft during 1965-66. The work environment
consisted of a huge array of identical desks, each with a hulking Friden
calculator in the right-hand corner.
My mental image of this situation, with its
festival and heterogeneous crowd dancing their way to parts unknown, owes
much to the films of Federico Fellini.
The last line "I rolled up my trousers
and went for a walk" is a reference to T.S. Elliott's "The Love
Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."
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