John Doyle writes

The Only Known Tape of Nick Drake Speaking

You're lying on your back in the forest,

it's dawn,

moist as deer giving birth, a blood-soaked

fire-crisp sky.

You breathe slower than clouds

that drive on the wrong side of the road. 

Europe is a crystal ball

that trickles ice like promises, escaping from the palms of your hands.

There is tree-bark that dangles from your hair,

petals detach in your sudden shapes,

rising to be anointed, replacing you,

where you used to be. It's not home.

There is the smell of coffee,

ginger, Arabia,

small woodland creatures,

witches, schoolgirls in pigtails click like knitting needles

in foul tongues they learned

from blues men.

This is wrong - the star-bent trajectory -

the horoscopes - 

the twisted sneer of brake-light on empty puddles.

Stand up, walk towards the nearest gate

like a fox hunting in the snow.

Thumb a lift towards the village,

keep your silence close to you,

the lady and the gent beside you 

are smiling

as they drive you away,

maybe they know your mother, your father,

maybe they saw your sister on TV saving Earth from aliens.

Silence hangs from your caftan -

It's how you'll bargain for your bread,

for your milk and honey,

should those wolves and dogs

start howling,

and there's no moonlight

for the next few decades. You seen the splinters of your guitar

lying in the ditch as you approached the village.

No-one knows if you stopped and bandaged it,

stopped it from bleeding

Nick Drake -- Keith Morris