The Place Where Failure Goes

(album: Rupert Holmes - 1975)

After they laid me in the ground,
I flew on the wing.
Somewhere outside the pearly gates,
I heard someone sing.
It was a girl I'd seen before,
Though we'd never met.
I asked her name. She said, "It's yours.
How could you forget?"

"I was a girl who appeared in a song
That you wrote when you turned seventeen.
I was a failure when I was a single.
I died, but you still loved me."

"And this is the place where failure goes
If your dreams won't die.
This is where all your hopes survive,
If they're not a lie.
This is where all the might-have-beens
Triumph and forgive.
This is where all the star-crossed loves
Have the chance to live."

I turned around and I saw every dreamer
Who gambled it all on the line.
Every belief that once ended in grief
Now was blazing alongside mine.

And I'm in the place where failure goes,
Here for quite some while,
Here where the games of win or lose
Only make us smile.
This is my voice beyond the grave,
Preaching from the past:
Heaven and hell are myths of men:
Dreams are all that last.