The Mousetrap (Caught In)

After all is said and done, not very much will have been either way:

I'm a chronicler of action, I'm an actor in the play.

I know the lines I have to speak,

I know that I won't ever quit, or corpse, or dry,

but the performance gets so pointless

and the days just drift on by.

Every time that I go to turn the pages of the calendar

in the third act of this twenty-ninth year of the show

I'm aware of the latest leading lady and get mad at her...

it's perfunctory, but why she'll never know.

When I began I had my hopes,

believed that I could be a leading light of the stage,

but now I've stunned myself to silence,

exhausted all my inner rage,

extinguished all my joy and violence,

trapped all my feelings in a cage.

Every time that i go to turn the pages of the calendar

I can see that I'm not really going anywhere:

all these years I have skirted round experience like a scavenger,

can I really feel? - I wonder if I dare?

At the end of the run, will there be anyone who cares?

And behind the actor's pose, heaven knows

if there's anyone left in there.