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Choral Ode of Iceni Ghosts

from It All Comes Out In The Wash (album) by Bardonthewire

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This tragic ode recounts the fate of the Iceni after Boudicca's defeat, where they were made an example of what happens to anyone who defies the Romans. Not the Roman civilisation that eventually followed - these are Nero-serving squaddies on the make and on the frontier of Empire. The obnoxious procurator who oversaw Boudicca's disgrace ran away to Gaul in the face of her response and the victorious general was recalled to Rome for excessive bloodlust.

Ancient Greek Theatre used tragic (& comic) masks to reveal rather than obscure which is the inspiration behind this one of Boudicca as a tragic Ancient British heroine. It captures the moment of her psychological ruin.

The 'grotesque' of the mask is an Expressionist technique - Boudicca's sufferings (disempowered, disgraced, flogged, her daughters raped) paralysed her psyche into a rictus of rage and revenge. It happens a lot!
lyrics

lyrics

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

credits

from It All Comes Out In The Wash (album), released November 22, 2019
The mask is 'Boudicca' as worn in the punk show"Boudicca; Britain's Dreaming" (1996-8) and "One Man and His Masks " (Edinburgh Fringe, 2011) was created for the author by Simon Crawford.

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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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