No Dice

by Clive James and Pete Atkin

I tried hard to be useful, but no dice
With no spit left I couldn't soften leather
With these old hands I couldn't even sew
So yesterday they left me on the ice
I could barely lift my head to watch them go
The sky was white, my eyes grew full of snow
What thing reached me first, bears or the weather
I just don't know
Yesterday was oh so long ago — so very long ago

I saw across our path through the lagoon
Thick shrubberies of hail collide and quarrel
Sudden trees of shellburst hump and blow
Our LVT turned through the reef too soon
The front went down, we all got set to go
But the whole routine was just too bloody slow
What kind of splinters hit me, steel or coral
I just don't know
Yesterday was oh so long ago — so very long ago

We hit the secret trails towards thin air
Aware we'd never live to tell the story
And at the last deep lake before the snow
We rigged the slings, chipped out the water-stair
Swung out the holy gold and let it go
It sank so far it didn't even glow
And if the priest died too to share our glory
I just don't know
Yesterday was oh so long ago — so very long ago

Yesterday we finished with the ditch
We stacked our spades and knelt in groups of seven
Our hands were wired by an NCO
With a fluent-from-long-practice loop and hitch
No dice -- there was nothing left to throw
A bump against your neck and down you go
And if I kept my peace or cried to heaven
I just don't know
Yesterday was oh so long ago — so very long ago

Yesterday from midnight until dawn
I lay remembering my lost endeavour
The love song that would capture how things flow
The one song that refuses to be born
For I have tried a thousand times or so
To link the ways men die with how they grow
But no dice, and if I'll do it ever
I just don't know
Yesterday was oh so long ago

Note (from Collected Poems)

The lyric with a multiple narrator in a multiple setting was a way for its author to be anyone and everywhere. Pete’s task was to unite the multiplicity with the music, and thus suggest that there can be a coherence in chaos. The test lay in the performance. Would the audience realize, as the song unfolded, that the puzzle had a point? The evidence suggested that they enjoyed the tease, and over the years we wrote several songs with a similar approach, although always, I hope, with a different array of themes. The LVT (Landing Vehicle Tracked) was used by the American forces in the Pacific, most famously by the Marines at Tarawa. The Incas really did hide their gold in a lake.