Lyrics: Anna Domino: This Time

By Abhijit Menon-Sen <>

After transcribing the lyrics to Anna Domino's Mysteries of America album, I turned to the older (1987) album, "This Time".

The album has ten tracks, all written (as far as I can tell) by Anna Domino.

This album and others are available from LTM Publishing.

I contacted Anna Domino to ask for permission to reproduce these lyrics here, and she was once again kind enough to correct the many errors I made in my transcription. (For some tracks, she typed in most of the lyrics herself.)

Own Kind

Here we are polite, well-informed, and mannerly
All our boys and girls have money and enough to eat
And weave a thread through the whole community
Showing how we value heredity

And what it means to belong to the fatherland
Know the aborigine, colourful but out of hand
And now and then others come and threaten us
And we fall back on forces we can trust

And we shake our fists at the posters on the bar room wall
We display our public grievance in the editorial page
Or else we paint it on a subway hall

We look upon a world but we're not quite part of it
All the trouble there surely isn't our fault
All the pain and hate and the needless punishment
We've grown out of that and we're quite proud of it

And something else that should well bear mentioning
Once we were on top, fashionable and interesting
And we held sway over half this ship of fools
Subject to our values, myths, and rules

We know we can't afford to lose the past
So full of moral lessons
We thought would always last

But now so many years without a war
We have a generation
A generation
Rotten to the core!

Just Once

More than just once
We chance on something
Much larger than life

Emotions so strong
They conjure an ocean
Of fear and delight

We seek to find each other
We reach and clasp another

And places we've been to
And left far behind us
Suddenly become home

As passion and sentimentality
Takes on a life
Of its own

Some days deserve another
Some never quite recover
More than just once

More than just once
Passed on a highway
Or lost in a crowd

Dreamed of at midnight
Remembered by day
Never spoken out loud

Far off in a world
Frightened by changes
And bored with its fate

We wait for the miracle
Promised at birth
Always so late

We listen for an answer
And come to court disaster

We seek to find another
We reach and clasp each other

More than just once

Time For Us

Time for us
A time for us
Love stepped in
On a heart that you could trust

Is there someone you can call?—I don't know
What's the real thing after all?—Tell me

One mistake can lead to another
Storms must break and threaten us all
Words take shape, roll over and under
I have held my love to break my fall

Time for us
In time for us
Short and sweet
Betrays faith so incomplete

Who's the one that you would call?—I don't know
What's the real thing after all?—Tell me

One clean break leads into another
Storms must rage and weather us all
I've seen faith and looked on in wonder
I have used my love to break my fall

Time for us
Left to us
Walks that beat
On a dead-end one-way street

Who'll be waiting at the end?—I don't know
Brother, sister, police men?—Tell me

One mistake can lead to another
Storms must break and threaten and blind
I see lightning and listen to thunder
I will hide my love inside this time

Time to find the time to—Give to us
Time to find the time that's—Left to us
Time to take a chance that—We know we must
The laws of romance say—In time we trust

In time for us...

Change To Come

He has sympathy and tenderness
Eyes that never tell a lie
Unspoken hope for what has come to less
And faith in everything in sight

Patient as an angel
Waiting for the signal
He's sure will arrive
Bringing change into his life

I wait impatient for the sun to rise
In silence loaded like a gun
He says that everything will work out right
I know this change will never come

Angry and unstable
Tired and unable to find
This change to come
It won't change my mind

Is this serious?
What's so mysterious to me
How do I know if it's time this time?
What's to become of us if
I can never trust you with
Hope and sorrow of my heart and mind

I know the passions of a younger love
Can turn around overnight
We've turned so many times by now my love
It's hard to tell the wrong from right

Wouldn't we breathe easier
Once we have really begun
Calling for this change to come

He has sympathy and tenderness
Eyes that never tell a lie
I wait impatient for the sun to set
This change to come into my life

This Time

This time, though nothing is said
I've realised I'm being misled
And this anger grows, and grows, and grows

Once I... I thought that I knew
The purpose of pride when a love proves untrue
But I know now how low, how low, how low...

I can hardly find the words
In the lies I have heard
They have lost whatever meaning they once had

If you could know how I feel
Kind of spent and unreal
Would you call me back or cast me off instead?

This time, I thought that I knew
But I've realised the love is untrue
And this anger grows, and grows, and grows

I can hardly find the words
In the lies I have heard
They have lost whatever meaning they once had

If you could know how I feel
Kind of spent and unreal
Would you call me back or cast me off instead?

I've brought it all on myself
You say, and how can I tell
If I misunderstood you or made it this way
It's done with anyway
And I'll never hear you say another word

I can hardly find the words
In the lies I have heard
I can hardly find the words
In the lies...
They have lost whatever meaning they once had

If you could know how I feel
Kind of spent and unreal
Would you call me back or cast me off instead?

I can hardly find the words
In the lies I have heard
They have lost whatever meaning they once had

Tempting

You watch me
What will you say?
When I face you
You look away
What's on your mind
This time?

You know me well
You know the longing is so strong
You might be right
But your intentions are all wrong
I've shut that door
Before

So you tempt me
Don't tempt me
What am I to do?
For every worthy demon in me
Angels of my reason speak too

I wait here
For time to tell
So many things I fear I've
Never felt
This racing heart
Stands apart

So you tempt me
Don't tempt me
Spin the wheel again
So tempting
Don't tempt me
I don't play to win
We must battle somewhere beyond the words
of virtue and sin

So you tempt me
Don't tempt me
Here the ice is thin
So tempting
Don't
I would never win

So tempting
Don't tempt me
Save my precious skin
This mystery means more to me
Than anything you say to draw me in

Tempt me with time on your side
My time is spent in reverie
Tell me what's yours could be mine
Mine to be tempting...

(Music video!)

She Walked

They fought, she walked out the door
He thought, this woman is such a bore
He stood his ground and let her
She always came back before

And she walked, as fast as her feet would go
Traffic, crowds, and anger made her go awful slow
As she runs she stumbles
It's all over now, where can she go

And they say that if you can't tell someone just what you want
If you never give an answer to that question in your heart
All is lost

And she thought:
If I could only free myself from this history of pain
My life might take a turn and I might learn to love again
I never give enough of what I have to give and then
He never guessed what I possess, I never knew that man
I guess I'll always wonder, I'll never understand

And they say that if you can't tell someone just what you want
If you never give an answer to that question in your thoughts
And if you can't tell someone just what you want
If you never give an answer to that question in your thoughts
All is lost

And they say:
Once upon a time there was a thrill within my heart
I noticed only pretty things until we fell apart
The falling took much longer and it seems to linger still
But maybe that's a memory, a wish that's unfulfilled
I never made a promise and now I never will

And they say that if you can't tell someone just what you want
If you never give an answer to that question in your thoughts
And if you can't tell someone just what you want
If you never give an answer to that question in your heart
If you never mention it
All is lost

All is lost when she walked

Rain

I can't say why, I won't say when
I'll ever find my place inside this race to win
There's nothing new in this dirty old town
My friends are all off somewhere else when I'm around

And the falling rain
I don't doubt it
It falls and it falls again
Falling rain to the centre of the earth
What is it worth
If it all gets washed away?

We soon forget what it was for
Another empire finds its way back to the shore
Those moments when this race excelled
Were very few and far between our race to hell

And the falling rain
I don't doubt it
It falls and it falls again
Falling rain to the centre of the earth
What is it worth
If it all gets washed away?

And the falling rain
I don't doubt it
It falls as it falls and then
Falling rain to the centre of the earth
It falls and it falls again
Falling rain
I don't doubt it
It falls as it falls and then
It falls as it falls and it falls as it falls again
Falling rain...

Come To Harm

I dreamed again last night
You were sleeping in my arms
Another chance to make it right
Slips right through my hands
And you come to harm

This must be paradise
'cause we can't be in heaven yet
I won't sleep at all tonight
I may never sleep again

How could you leave me?
Here and alone
How could you leave me?
Alone

It seems this sorrow comes
And says so much that leaves so much
To be said to each other once
Unspoken leaves behind a heart of lead

And the raging thoughts that run
Through every chance and every possibility
Chasing down the cord
To this curtain of finality

How could you leave me?
Here and alone
How could you leave me?
Alone

How could you leave me?
Here and alone
How could you leave me?
Here

I dreamed again last night
You were sleeping in my arms
Another chance to make it right
Slips right through my hands
And you come to harm

This must be paradise
'cause we can't be in heaven yet
I won't sleep at all tonight
I may never sleep again

It seems this sorrow comes
And says so much that leaves so much
To be said to each other once
Unspoken leaves behind a heavy heart of lead

And the raging thoughts that run
Through every chance and every possibility
Chasing down the cord
To this curtain of finality

How could you leave me?
Here and alone
How could you leave me?
Here...

Away from the poison flowers
Far from the sharpened corners
I'll keep you from the edge
And back from the jaws that yawn and beg

Lake

In this place, wide and endless
Surrounding the lake
Where the water waits silently
I walk in place
Once begun

So tell me now
I'm swept in your wake
I can't stand on in silence
Walking to the other side of the lake
I know somehow all your sufferers and tyrants
Walked this way

In the sky, pale and empty
No wind ever blows
And the flowers of dreams
Slip by as I go
Looking back

So tell me now
I rush in your wake
Can I follow you in silence?
Walking to the other side of the lake
It seems somehow we have finally arrived
To turn away

So tell me now
While I'm swept in your wake
I can't stand on in silence
Moving towards the other side

I know somehow we have finally arrived

So tell me now
I'm swept in your wake
Will we know it when we get there?
Searching for the other side of the lake
It seems somehow every sufferer and tyrant
Walked this way

So tell me now
I'll dive as you say
Breaking this silence
I will reach the other side of the lake
And see myself like Ophelia in flowers
Drift away

So tell me now
I rush in your wake
Can I follow you in silence?
Walking to the other side of the lake
It seems somehow we have finally arrived
To turn away

So tell me now...

(Here's an interview with Anna Domino about “Lake” and the production of this album.)