Song 1: Caterpillar
Bandages woven in love
rock sleepy men in dreams
that drift like curlews cries
towards a blue-eyed girl
who stands against the sky
in a dress made entirely of sand.
|
|
Song 2: First Chair
The egg the small boy’s offered’s soft and warm,
like the brown-lipped snails
the romans used to eat,
(Until recently, no-one even noticed –
we have delivered its triggers
all over the Northern Hemisphere),
the bowler’s saying,
as he catches a ball above the small boy’s head
with outsize gloves.
(Until recently, no-one even noticed –
we have delivered its triggers
all over the Northern Hemisphere).
Loganberries sink in tepid cream
as swallows fly like lizards from the eaves.
Bring the chair in, darling. Sleepy-time!
(Until recently, no-one even noticed –
we have delivered its triggers
all over the Northern Hemisphere).
|
|
Song 3: Refugee
The tallest is a man who’s got no nose.
We see him every morning on the bank.
Everywhere he goes he takes his cart,
as if it were some kind of heavenly dog
you can’t just shout “Go home” to. Here he comes,
wheeling it along the wall towards us,
down into the barn where we were born –
his speckled face as brown as his long coat
that used to sweep the concert halls of Europe
to thunderous applause. It’s over now.
The only sound this morning is the calves,
Their beds of straw still warm; and honey-bees.
|
|
Song 4: For Queen and Country
She’s found out I’m in hospital up here;
She tells me that she wheels me around
her pungent lakeside gardens in her dreams
so we can smell the cherry trees together.
I don’t feel like a hero,
I feel like a child someone’s lied to,
or like a stone that someone lonely’s lost.
……And I never knew she even noticed me!
|
|
Song 5: Un till the land
That night, after feeding the horses,
I took the path that curled
along the stream, through buttercups,
up to the widow’s house;
and I climbed the stairs to her room,
and found her lying there,
as I found her every evening,
as still and sweet as apples;
and, standing by the window
above the rolling fields,
like someone on a small ship
who dreams of gold,
I saw a tall figure
I did not recognize
cut, with his dark plough,
the fields’ moonlit throats.
cut, with his dark plough,
the fields’ moonlit throats.
|
|
Song 6: Point of Entry
The river has run dry.
The air is still.
The man is lost.
The nurses say he’s ill.
The children ask them
why he’s still alive.
The nurses say
the bravest men survive.
|
|
Programme notes
To read full programme notes in Wod 'doc or Word 'rtf' format click below
|