Get all 10 Bardonthewire releases available on Bandcamp and save 35%.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of The Ruined Hall, Marked for Life, The Breck's Isle Rap, Dr Who Am I and the Zen Trails of Hafiz (album), I Got On At Hallelujah Lamppost, All The Saints, 'Hiraeth' - Symphony Number 1 in Coal Minor, It All Comes Out In The Wash (album), and 2 more.
1. |
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Where Whitefriars prayed
Children walk on water
Towards Christmas.
Dirty December
sunset spilled
on the rippling Ouse
like oil.
A factory -its
smoke clouding
the English sky -
And seagulls,
faces like free-fall
angels
screaming on the grey.
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2. |
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Somewhere mellow between
the end of the overblown blackberries
and
the start of the harvested leaves
fused flies
on clinical sills
hint at bleached sun
and
in the hedges
thistle winds to come.
To eyes trained on histrionic heights
of Welsh adolescence,
this stubborn serenity,
these mediaeval colours
are
endlessly reassuring:
a great grey blanket billowing unbroken from the North Pole,
wild chords of geese in its folds;
the flinty, dependable noun
behind mists of adjectives.
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3. |
LeStrange's Dream
01:42
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Homage to Henry Lestrange (1815-1862.) (JP, Dep.Lieut & Sheriff of Norfolk, Lord High Admiral of the Wash, Cpt 1st West Norfolk Militia, Creator of New Hunstanton)
He had a dream and it built a town
Henry Lestrange
Rebuilt a Hall that was falling down
Henry Lestrange,
Restored a 13th century church
Henry Lestrange
Most of it from his private purse,
Henry Lestrange
He raised the roof and stained more glass,
Henry Lestrange
And the work he did, it was built to last.
This forever childhood of buckets and spades,
Victorian green and honey sands,
Candy-stripe cliffs, red, white and gold,
A holiday heaven from his hands.
A Norfolk Brighton, Joy on the Wash,
Henry Lestrange
He carved his vision from carrstone rocks,
Henry Lestrange
A railway to bring the nation in,
Henry Lestrange
He gave up some land to let it begin,
Henry Lestrange,
St Edmund's old England complete with pier,
Henry Lestrange
Hot fish and chips, and an ice cold beer.
This forever childhood of buckets and spades,
Victorian green and honey sands,
Candy-stripe cliffs, red, white and gold,
A holiday heaven from his hands.
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4. |
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"Come the evening, folk were going about their daily tasks, working in the fields while birds sweetly sang. The teacher sat in the porch waiting for the schoolmaster to appear before Bible reading class could begin, meanwhile the attending children happily played, running up and down the churchyard, little knowing the impending doom that was to befall them. The schoolmaster duly arrived, readings began and when done was followed with a final hymn, 'Oh let me, heavenly Lord extend, My view to life's approaching end... . "(Religious tract 1819, probably by the then Curate of Sedgeford.)
"During the dreadful thunderstorm on the Evening of July 5th the electric fluid struck the top of Sedgeford Church Steeple on the West Side, and precipitated to the ground several stones of considerable magnitude making a breach in the wall of about a yard square. The lightning also passed through the Church entering in at a window near the porch on the South side; and after crossing in a North East direction, it made its escape at two places in an upper window near the Chancel on the North side". (The Times, 1819)
Zeus serves notice, via Hermes, I can mind-read his no show:
“Earth’s off axis, mind wreaks chaos, and it mocks gods’ control!!
“Man-made death-tides,winds, quakes, burn-outs, heat, light, sound – once all
Fairy-ringed, Neptune-swayed, angel-buttressed: now they blow.
“Past my epoch, my four cycles, a million years
Hurling thunderbolts and miracles (mirror-calls), I let it go.
"Gone my long reign and its vapour’s subtle shape-shifting Cloud;
Breath of God’s shadow falling as rain, my own shadow.
“King of angels, I, yet angels and gods looking down
Pray for low birth to ascend where we high spirits go.
“Man yet king god, I return to the earth as a star;
Raise the standard of what men may become, the hero.
“Man and not god, with my lightning confined in a sword,
Earthed, to die there like a man, pass the third heaven so.
“Like St Michael, ageless angel, took one lifetime as a man
To be God the day his body died, so let me below...
I embrace this girl among the lowest of the low."
Link to full words and other material here- https://garethcalway.blogspot.com/2019/04/desperately-researching-susan.html
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5. |
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Strophe
We’re the restless ghosts in the winds and rains,
Funnelling the valleys, sweeping the plains,
Inlets and warrens that run underground,
Unbridled pathways, unquiet streams,
Haunted hidden corners of rootless sound,
Hives of Iceni, dead and unqueened,
By bronzebreasted redcrests violently weaned,
We’re the baby who wails for her dead mother’s breast.
Antistrophe
We are dead keening women, whispering grass,
The breath in the lilac and bluebells, the blast
Through the pale yellow oak leaves, hawthorns
And nettles. And that shout, queen of warriors,
From your victory chariot with your triumphant
Horsemen around you! And that salt chill of a winter’s
Reprisals that blighted twice twenty summers.
We’re the mother who wails for her new baby’s death.
Catastrophe
We are the cries in the corn, the harrowings hooted
Under moons of hunger, in the squeals of the hunted,
The creaking of geese through night-forest fears,
The unresting dunes and the moaning wave-break,
We’re the memory that’s cankered two thousand years
Of Celtic blood with an unhealing ache,
We’re the oracles lost in the noise diggers make.
We’re the dead daughters wailing for the end of the world.
© Gareth Calway 1998, in Britain's Dreaming (Frontier)
credits
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6. |
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The elements of Christmas -
Fire and ice -
In this tempered Arctic sun
That burns in the trees.
In these pools like skating rinks
Deep and dark and even.
Ice
In the flinty ground
And the bitter Easterly.
Fire
In the solstice sunset
Bleeding the black woods
And its ice-pink afterglow
And its fire-blue areola.
Ice
In the barn-wide rising moon.
Ice
In my soul as I'm turned
To the unlit wings
That cradle and grave
The sunset's light show.
Fire
In my soul
At a rising star
Burning like ice
In the polar blue.
Fire
In my hearth at home
(Crackling through logs),
In the farmer's field
(Roaring through twigs),
Red-raw and orange
Tongues of life-lust:
The vital, stripped down
Simplicities of winter.
credits
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7. |
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The woods were blurred with menace,
I could not read the signs,
My Common Sense was fading,
It has so many times.
The Rights of Man and Woman
Like road-kill on the track,
Too deep and late the forest
To think of turning back.
Midsummer in the greenwood,
Midwinter chill within,
The starry sky of reason,
The night as dark as sin.
Tom Paine is pointing down the road
To new world Washington;
I meet the clear and steady eye
Of Revolution
That maps a Constitution through
The dead decaying mess,
The Royal Burkshire Hunters’ praise
Of murky wilderness.
Midsummer in the greenwood,
Midwinter chill within,
The starry sky of reason,
The Paine of hope within.
© Gareth Calway 2015 first published in 'Doin Different, 39 New Ballads from the East of England' (Popppyland)
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8. |
Edith
04:15
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She sees the pale gold August wheat,
The oaken greens of home,
A mind’s-eye Norfolk harvest wrapped
Around October’s bones.
6 paces off, 8 rifles point,
Death scarves her blue-grey eyes,
The woman stands and prays and waits
And still no shot arrives…
Her life is flashing by, the days
With Eddy on the beach
‘When life was fresh and beautiful,
The country dear and sweet.’
‘Love of country’s not enough
And when they shoot me dead
Let bitterness and hatred die,’
Our Norfolk angel said.
… The clinic clean and welcoming
The poor and most forlorn;
A mother to her nurses clad
In angels’ uniforms.
A spider crawled across the floor,
One screamed, would stamp it dead,
‘A woman doesn’t take a life,
She gives it,’ Edith said.
The British held the line at Mons,
The French were in retreat,
All stranded men came to her door
Through Brussels’ conquered streets.
‘Love of country’s not enough
And when they shoot me dead
Let bitterness and hatred die,’
Our Norfolk angel said.
One nurse too hot for Prussian pride
They bullied as a spy,
Ede sent her home – with army secrets
Bandaged to her thigh!
La Libre Belgique was her text,
The Life of Christ her God;
Said Pinkhoff, Bergan, Mayer, Quien:
‘Give her the firing squad.’
4 sneaks and spies to smoke her out,
3 days’ interrogation.
She wouldn’t lie…. They shot her dead
For love of more than nation.
‘Love of country’s not enough
And when they shoot me dead
Let bitterness and hatred die,’
Our Norfolk angel said.
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9. |
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10. |
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The title of the adagio is Afon Marw literally Dead River but Valley of the Shadow of Death would do as well.
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11. |
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Hey butt, take a walk on the Forge Side…
Rocking over the melody
Rolling under the beat
The girl is losing her fashioned head
The boyo’s finding his feet.
They’re moving into a smoky world
Winding free of the street
Rocking over the melody
Rolling under the beat.
He’s miming don’t you love me?
The Rams are slurping their Wind & Piss
Ogling pieces of meat
Stamping time to the furnace thud
Needing someone to beat.
The swaying hips of the dancing boy
Mark him out for their feet.
Knocking over the melody
Rolling under the beat.
He’s miming don’t you love me?
Rocking over the melody
Rolling under the beat
The girl is losing her fashioned head
The boyo’s finding his feet.
They’re moving into a smoky world
Winding free of the street,
Rocking over the melody
Rolling under the beat.
He’s miming don’t you love me?
The Rams are slurping their Wind and Piss
Ogling pieces of meat,
Stamping time to the furnace thud
Needing someone to beat.
The swaying hips of the dancing boy
Mark him out for their feet.
Knocking over the melody
Rolling under the beat.
He’s miming don’t you love me?
Shoot me.
In his, her body’s a violin
Moaning sharply and sweet
His a cello below the heat
Of hammered sinew and skin.
They soar and plunge along the bow
Of what their cannon pulses know.
Rocking over the melody
Rolling under the beat.
He’s miming don’t you love me?
They decoy brushes against his cheek.
The boy’s reflexes are neat.
Hooks the decoy across the floor,
Mines a fist through his teeth.
The Rams are halted but not for long
Twelve to one you can’t beat
Knocking over the melody
Rolling into the street.
(And maybe we could go for a walk together.
Up The Mountain.)
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12. |
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1. Up The Mountain.
2. (coda) Isla's Song (Star The Dark)
The river’s prophet tongue I now understand:
I am heir to my druid realm at last.
Girl’s curves hover, almost in my grasp,
The boys step back a bit; I have command.
Down Jerusalem Lane, mine’s the upper hand,
A Carpenter of Fate in the Christmas
Sun - then the mocking mud, led on by a judas
To his Hotpoint, house, wife, ‘friends’, looks that brand.
No escape, through a room that madly pulsates
To Pen y Maen bridge, tracing beneath it
Green microdot fields, hills’ pie in the sky,
Victorian railings, Dad’s Thought Police eye.
I need a real home, away from this place:
A girl, a room, a bed, tavern, music…
© Gareth Calway (first published in 'Exile In His Country,' Bluechrome, 2006)
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Bardonthewire England, UK
Performance poetry with a library card (voice & drum, folk ballads, ghazals, sonnets, beat poems, sound poems, raps) much of it happening 'on the street' or jostling to be heard in the tavern. Researched stories of folk heroes and real folk. History for you. Bardic poetry striving (as all arts do) for the condition of music (from punk though rap to to prog). Visionary lit. for your average Blake. ... more
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