Alison O'Donnell

Lass From A Distant Shore

The lass she came from a distant shore/Her hair in burnished ringlets/The modest dress she often wore/And a smile from morn until sunset/Lowered lashes and pursed lips/And poses pretty dainty/By her tiny steps and little skips/She appeared to be most saintly/Raddle right the day oh raddle right the dee, who will marry me sang she?/Raddle right the day oh raddle right the dee, who will settle me on their knee?/The youngest lad from the finest folk/Worked all the hours of daylight/From the moment first when he awoke/Till the moonlight fell upon the night/He had a simple way of thinking/That all the world was kind and bright/The farm boys took him out a-drinking/And the lass appeared to his deligTwo hearts were very soon entwined/And songbirds sang from every tree/He shunned his kin in a love so blind/And closed the door to every plea/Oh mother, father, sister mine/I will buy for her a golden ring/My sweet betrothed oh she is fine/And a bride she’ll be in the early spring/She lay abed till the noon of day/While he worked his fingers to the bone/Then she stepped out for to sport and play/With all the tricks she had ever known/That foolish lad waits for evermore/A cuckold in the marriage bed/Oh mother, father, sister mine/Forgive this fool for he was misled                                

Farewell To The Strawberry Tree

Thomas is away across the rolling main/He will taste the briny deep for many a long day/He has stroked the holy ground where his mother lies beneath/ And parted from his love under a sky replete with rain/Farewell to the strawberry tree and the purple butterfly/Which fluttered in the secret places known to you and I/And danced above our craning heads so lively and so high/On the day she bade her Thomas a most sorrowful goodbye/He whittled and he carved to please her with his token/A heart of bogwood oak to fold into her linen/ He pledged to her most sacred words never to be broken/Even in the twilight years when promises are dimming/The path whereon they walked is choked with slippery moss/She has set a forest fire of his hard and wooden heart/And flung the cold and powdery ash into the raging of the wind/ Where the particles of her and him forever drift apart/And on foreign soil he will betray her in the blinking of an eye

I Wish We’d Sailed On The Jeanie Johnston

When first we stood on board/On a bitter day in December/Evicted by our landlord/Whose scowl we’d always remember/There goes our grizzled captain/None too steady on his feet/He’s got a barrel of liquor hidden/In a chest full of bootleg treats/Me brother and me in the slimy hold/With not a shoe nor stocking/The celestial sky so dark and cold/And the first mate always mocking/Where’s the castor oil and the Epsom salts/The brandy and laudanum too?/We’re all going down with a pestilent fever/Bony emigrants and crew/Withered crones and infants squall/The grandsire is dead in his berth/They will roll his body in a threadbare shawl/Sure there’s nothing left of his girth/And into the sea the urchins slide/And the fiddler who had a great fall/Their rickety bones wash up with the tide/In a hundred years near Montréal/Paters and aves chanted all day/For someone dropped a lighted candle/Me brother and me have already lied/That we know not who’s the vandal/The sailor who sews with a thimble on his thumb/He’s a mean and villainous rascal/He is never mute and he is never dumb/But a fecker and a potbellied scoundrel/While the more robust were engaged in sport/And pointing at the fish that were flying/He cried out with a contemptuous snort/That the culprit would soon be a-dyin’/The brother dropped down hard on the deck/By Newfoundland’s perilous capes/The mariner’s grasped him around by the neck/And claimed he’d burnt the captain’s drapes/Our hunger not met by biscuit alone/It was I crept into his quarters/For the captain had herrings and a meaty bone/And several pints of porter/The ruin of our game of pitch and toss/And the harsh and cruel mistreatment/Recalled to mind our country lost/So that sailor got a fearsome beating/He lost his footing against the stern/So we heaved him over the side/We told the cap’n there was nothing to learn/A tragic accident was implied/Oh I wish we’d sailed on the Jeanie Johnston/Good ship from Kerry to Quebec/With a safety record steady and constant/Worthy of a dismal trek/We marvel at the forest verdant green/Where the bears can all day hide/At little Anticosti Island seen/Nothing like it in this world wide/The riggers do have a canary in a cage/It sings a song of lament/The Canadian doctor flies into a rage/When he finds our health is spent/I’m afeared we’ll be a burden on the State/We’re going to give the locals all our ills/The death toll rising at a pitiful rate/We’re obligated to earn their goodwill/Fiddly diddly di doh/Riddly diddly day doh/Rum de dum dee dandy/Fol de dol dee day doh/And we’re all going down with a pestilent fever/Bony emigrants and crew 

The Unwelcome Tide Of Tomorrow

Roll and dash you towering waves/Throw yourselves up high and down low/Bring to me my soaking lover/Before he drown in the deep below/Flowing tide unwelcome tomorrow/It tells us that you slipped away/I hold in my mind your smile so serene/And think on your likeness each passing day/All the way round as far as I see/The waters have landed his body to me/And when I awake from the depths of my dream/He will be my drowned dearie afloat on the sea/His hands are clasped with no sign of a struggle/Folded neatly on his snowy white breast/A suit of blue for the broken body/All decked out in his Sunday best/A salty crust lies over those hands/But glowing bright in its final endeavour/His finger bearing my golden ring/That I vow to wear on mine forever             

Splendid Ring

O my love Francis he sails away/Far from my side he’ll roam and stray/He’s turned his back on Dublin Bay/Gone forever on this mournful day/O mind yourself now Frankie dear/  You’ll cross an ocean of my tears/Write me a letter within the year/And tell me tales of the new frontier/Bright is the yellow blossom of the gorse/With its coconut scent heady where we lay/Oft times I beat my breast with girlish force/But no other boy will ever lead me astray/When you hang up your travelling shoes/The way of living entirely new/But you’ll remember the girl you wooed/The one who’ll warm her hands with youYou made your fortune and that is grand/You bought your dearest a fine gold band/My turn to part from Dublin strand/Soon a splendid ring will adorn my left hand                       

Brothers Grey

Said Brother Grey to his Brother Grey/We are the noble hounds/ Living out our lives on fertile ground/To a man or woman bound/Where the fox and solitary hare/Are free and fleet by day/And we all breathe the same pure air/Brother Grey the Younger to the track he was taken/Proving to be fittest in order to survive/Mister Fox had warned him the work was backbreaking/That he must fly like the wind or he wouldn’t stay alive/Now friendly fox has vanished from the field/Those redcoats have done their dirty deed/His rivals proclaimed that his fate was well sealed/He’ll meet with a bullet sprawled among the weeds/Brother Grey the Elder was forced to chase the lure/To spend his cold and lonely nights in a filthy dirty pen/Training was a nightmare for his body to endure/Cruelty and savagery by monster bogeymen/Those who tie the cocks with artificial gaffs/And whip their horses standing high/  Will abandon Grey the Elder and beat him with a staff/And he will welcome death under a foreboding sky/Brother Grey the Younger to shelter was transported/Where he met with a girl who called him by a name/She gazed at him adoringly and home he was escorted/For the rest of his days he looked back at her the same

Shout Our Redemption To The Silvery Pines

If you were a snake and I a mouse/I would halt so sudden and lock you in my eye/You would me deify/If you were a bear and I a slippery eel/I would slither from your grasp/And you would before me kneel/Companions we could be/If you were a fox and I a lowly rabbit/I would spring above your head/And your bark would be unsaid/Your prejudices shed/Raise your cup and I will raise mine/Drink in the golden sunset/Let us sheath our knives and renounce our threats/Shout our redemption to the silvery pines/If you were a blue jay and I a grasshopper/I would skip in an instant to the heavenly sky/It would you mystify/If you were a locust and I billowing corn/I would not extend a welcome/Pour down my bitter scorn/And the farmer would not mourn/If you were a coronet and I the rightful heir/I would pledge to do no wrong/I would not wear you lightly/Mercy beckons brightly

The Man Who Taught The Nation

A man of many stirring words he was the son of a stonemason/When he was in his boyhood made a solemn promise and a prayer/Oh welcome the hour on a glorious day in an age he wished to hasten/That freedom and liberty on his mortality he would swear/He felt the weight of brotherhood and the destiny of nation/Balladeers and heroes rise in visions in the still of night/Warriors of intellect, of battle and campaign, they ignited his imagination/But the headless horseman waits patiently for his victim to unite/Behold the trumpet of victory and the sword of light/Bright symbols burning in this rebel’s heart/Guide him in his darkest night /Before the breakers’ yard he must depart/He set the scene for a passion play and read the proclamation/Fierce fighting all too brief by the female and the male/But greater guns brought alacritous end to the first armed insurrection/Jeers and spit bombarded them on their journey to the cold stone gaol/ He wrote fine lines of poetry and letters to his mother/But these found no safe passage and nor did his remains/A sacrifice in blood they all of them did pledge and were killed one after another/With a white cross over his young breast under the sweeping wall was slain/His wounded comrade tied on a chair beneath the open sky/Faced the firing squad that day without a sob or any plea/Unholy soil in a quicklime pit and no godly church where they can lie/That rising band of patriots strove for their country to be free/ 

Four Fine Females

Here’s a song about four fine females/A Liffey bridge bears the name of the first/Always willing and ever cheerful/When workers’ rights were at their worst/In the days of the Lockout she stood for all/And risked her life at Eastertide/She carried the words of freedom’s call/While on the paper they lay still wet/Oh Rosie, Rosie Hackett/We most admire the rebel in ye/A beacon for justice and veracity/Keeper of the flame for liberty/I’ll tell you of a woman who kept a brothel/The Pinking Dandies they bloodied her/She summoned their leader to a court of law/For all to witness that saboteur/On a visit to London she was told make way/For the monarch is entitled to all the road/If you English are servile and timid she said/We Irish are not and especially today/Oh Peg, Peggy Plunkett/We most admire the rebel in ye/When the debts of patrons were outstanding/She published their names in volumes three/Yeats wrote a poem about young Con/A gazelle she was in silk kimono/Painting landscapes and reading history/She acted in a few Abbey Theatre shows/In boots and a feathered hat so green/She fought for Ireland’s freedom/A smoking gun fired in 1916/Threw her into the prison machine/Oh Constance, Con the Countess/We most admire the rebel in ye/She composed the anthem of the Citizen Army/And to feed the workers sold her jewellery/Damning words on organised crime/Was a risky business on any day/Facing up to villains full of menace/Made Guerin all too easy prey/Mighty was the boss who ordered her demise/Deathly threats were set in stone/His henchmen took her by surprise/She died in her car all alone/Oh Veronica, Veronica Guerin/We most admire the rebel in ye/You gave your life in pursuit of truth/Unwelcome was your mortality/Unrivalled was your bravery

Scarlet Berries For The Mistle Thrush                       

As I walked out a year passed by/Where rowan trees flourish on craggy ground/And hanging rocks still stand on high/My cries against the cliffs rebound/While the hawthorn feeds the mistle thrush/Above the verge where my sweet plunged down/Trembling terrors through my body rush/I rent and tear my sombre mourning gown/On those cold lips I would place my kiss/I would lie my laddie-o in a grand necropolis/Where scarlet berries sway upon the branch/And the mistle thrush joins with their lively dance/ Springtime daisies under foot are crushed/Did he leap or somehow did he fall?/Songs within me now are hushed/His name it echoes when I wail and call/Sisterhood of dusk and dawn/Does not serve me well o’er time/Sorrow wracks me each rising morn/Our deep and fleeting love sublime/On those cold lips I would place my kiss/I would lie my laddie-o in a grand necropolis/Where scarlet berries sway upon the branch/And the mistle thrush joins with their lively dance

The Birds Of Belfast Lough

As the crow flies from Belfast city to the tip of Napoleon’s Nose/It passes over the Polish ponies grazing wild all the day/To keep the scrubland down where damselfly and the moorhen goes/The place where the sand martin and speedy swifts holiday/The oystercatcher is a wading bird scurrying across the land/With its beak like a pair of sharpened scissors chopping at the ground/The curlew speckled wader with a curvy bill in a bank of sand/And the godwit dons a suit of red when his mate is Iceland bound/The dabbling duck and the wigeon with his breast of chestnut brown/Redshank with their orange legs and the lapwing tumbles down/Flickering black and flashing white when their many wings abound/Birds of patterned plumage at Belfast Lough can be found/There’s a sleeping giant guards the city resting up on Cave Hill/Where the boyos took their rebellious oath at the top of McArt’s Fort/Birds wheeled above at McCracken’s capture crying shrill/There was lamentation on that hilltop, no joy, there was no sport/At the limestone quarry years gone by is where the railway line was laid/In the time of the Victorian queen from the hill down to the docks/On either side two hamlets for the working men of that fine trade/Daddystown and Mammystown for the dwellers and their flocks   

A Penny For The Wrenboys

In 1847 the lads set out on Stephen’s Day/A holly bush branch holds high a miniature king of the birds/You’d be mocked if instead of a live one you paraded a bunch of hay/Hunted in hedges for many an hour the wee druid wren in the furze/Well the boys may be dressed in rags with red kerchiefs on their heads/But there’s a fine set of ribbons on their standard and there’s horse hair on their chins/Sing out for coins and vittles although most of their patrons lie dead/Fiddle and flute and their raucous song all make for a lively din/Up with the kettle and down with the pan/Give us a penny to bury the wran/The hunger that is on us might not make us a man/We can’t spare a penny to bury with the wran/There’s a fight between the youths, not yet callow young men/Some have a robin or a mouse in a box or a cork with a few feathers on/Their wooden mast is not very grand and one has an imaginary wren/The bodhrán is all beaten up and the paper on the stick all gone/There lived an unearthly woman who enticed many a swain/She drowned them in the ocean which invoked a deadly charm/So she turned herself into a wren for punishment and pain/And that is why we hunt that bird and do it a grievous harm

Captain Swing And The Two-Penny Trash

 You are the enemy, your heart is black and the book is too/Says Captain Swing when he signs his name/Good labouring hands not collecting all their due/So you will reap and sow the blame/In the Two-Penny Trash the words of Cobbett begin to sting/Or Peter Porcupine he’s known/Agitation is near at hand writes Captain Swing/When William fourth was on the throne/Honest workers banished to Van Diemen’s Land/And others sent to Sydney Cove/Cobbett serves a stretch in Newgate gaol and three are hanged/And on the farms no longer rove/The Captain calls to smash those new-fangled threshing devils/The sheans that steal our livelihood and take away our toil/Burn down the stacks and ricks and fire the barns/These are the Swing Riots and for them we make protest and revel/We the people want to turn our soil  

Waltzing In The Attic

Climb the loft ladder under the gable roof/Fantasy grows sadder as she prepares for the ball/In amongst a maiden’s junk an unwelcome truth/Red satin in the trunk three sizes too small/Gowns with lace sleeves once spun in the dancehall/Swallows catch a glimpse through the tiny window/Of the woman who feeds the fox and all the garden birds/Her hair is long and stringy but her face is aglow/As she rises and falls to all the music she has heard/A secretive dance that no one else will ever know/Waltzing in the attic with bare feet on the boards/Is her greatest escape from a clock that ticks so slow/She opens up the chest where her jewels are stored/And whirls beneath the rafters with an imaginary beau/Ascending to the eaves for the dearest of her hours/One, two and three steps in that magical space/Banishing a lifetime of vision turned sour/She is spinning dizzily in a decent man’s embrace

The Banks Of The Itchen    

At Lankhills Town they bury their Roman dead/Laurentina’s family bones lie there/She pulls a fine wool mantle over her head/To hide the shiny coils of her hair/Stepping most carefully in felt slippers/Of glowing saffron yellow wound with golden thread/Venta Belgarum boasts a wheel with roads like spokes/Radiating out from the town/Built with precision by engineering folks/For single axle carts to clatter down/At Oram’s Arbour awaits an adventurous friend/Furtively cloistered in a sea silk cloak/Prisca and Laurentina draped around a Jupiter column/Juno, Minerva, Mercury and Hercules/Smile at the two entrancing women/Cooling in the gentle noonday breeze/Watercress thrives along the banks of the Itchen/Brook lamprey wriggling in the shallows/Mosaics in the courtyard at Rockbourne bewitching/Two young Romans guileless and callow/Idle by the river in their dream of tomorrow/When they should be at home weaving and stitching/In time to come their houses will be buried/Fall into decline and disrepair/But before that day they will take their turn to be married/And find themselves with infants in their care/No longer hearing waters flowing by The Weirs/Instead children’s laughter carefree and merryPrisca and Laurentina fondly think of Portus Magnus/With walls ten feet thick and twenty high/They will learn to accept sickness and sadness/As the age of Venta Belgarum rolls on by/Rolls on by    

Dressed Stone Upon Stone 

Stone arch upon arch aqueduct/Scanned by eyes of two travelling/With gladdened hearts and wheels in tandem/Helmet straps under chins tucked/Their journey utterly random/     Roman waters pouring past/Darting over ancient boulders/All the history in their field trip/Tumbling down too fast/For cameras slung on their shoulders/All their senses are awash/     When they rest beneath the vista/Whirring wasps round fizzy drops/From fruity cups of squash/With a cherry on the top/Their cluttered house is far away/Their baggage all forgotten here/The drip drip of a gentle rain/Freshens the belvedere

 Where Once Grew Five Great Forests

Cloudy night sky is calling you into the unknown/Who holds the lantern to guide you back home?/You seek ancient wildwoods/Find broadleaf woodlands/Orange eyes are following you/From the disused nest of the crow/Long-eared owl hoots like the blow on a glass jar/Juvenile squeaks like a gate in the field from afar/Hiding in a stand of conifers/The colours of the leaf and bark/You cannot see those hunted creatures/Only confusion in the stars/Do not be threatened by this peaceful night/Someone will show you a comforting light/Ash entwined with glossy ivy/It twists and turns, confident and shiny/Where is the familiar house-proud cat?/Your footsteps turn this way and that/The botanical giant that is the spruce/Shows off its leaves in canopy profuse/Someone shouts your name in the dark/Your story is nearing its twilight arc

The Whims Of Queen Matilda

 Three generations named Matilda/The youngest most ambitious of them all/King Stephen tried several times to kill her/At Lincoln city he met with his downfall/She lost her brother in the White Ship disaster/The crew were drunk and struck upon a rock/This caused her heart to beat so much faster/For she was of the very same royal stock/Wedded with a noble boy from Anjou/There were three sons born of that tempestuous pair/One would be Plantagenet King as well she knew/And in his glory she would have a share/ She had jewels and an ancient holy relic/It was the hand of Apostle James the Saint /Capricious and never apologetic/Her tempers ran amok without restraint/Captured and escaped from Devizes in the robes of the dead/Carried as a corpse in disguise and in miracle arises/Casts off the ropes that have tied her to a funeral bed/Matilda’s army set out for Winchester/But Stephen set the city all on fire/Her own half-brother Robert of Gloucester/Could not help her then and so she did retire/Sailed to Normandy not as a queen/But Henry her son did rule till he expired

The Coming to London of Wily Will

Oh they call me Wily Will/I love me a tankard of cider/I can turn my hand to farming/But I want to see the world wider/I plays an old melodeon/But I sing with a voice that’s finer/Travel up to London town/On the bumpy roads and lanes/Past the blurring sheep on a fancy train/Designed by a man with a brain/And the grandest of names/Clatter on the cobbles/I am wailing about daft Dan/Battering Mary the milkmaid/Till down to the ground she fell/Or a tale about a lad waylaid/On his way to ring the church bell/Travel up to London town/Far away from the tossing sea/I will doff my cap to every milady/And never disagree/I’ll catch me shuteye at a boarding-house/For the work is hard and me limbs do ache/Them bawdy tales in the alehouse/Will keep me oh so wide awake/And though I’m too canny for the jailhouse/I’ll likely be singing of heartbreak/I miss the folks at the farmhouse/And me bit of bacon and fruitcake

Between Two African Rivers

Motoring hard on a long and dusty route/Stones and dust kicked up for many miles/Snakes coil in hope of pursuit/Idling and lazy in a state of bile/Stripes and patches go flashing by/
Animals you would see in a city zoo/Roam this landlocked, scorched drive-by/As far as the eye a glorious view/Travel far to usher in a hopeful dawn/Shout and cheer until our heads spin/Something better is being born/Out with the old while the new rolls in/Shake our limbs with a multitude/Love the circus of celebration/The new leader sets a euphoric mood/Gone the colonial nation/But soon the farms are lying fallow/And power has blinded both his eyes/The public coffers have little to show/And twenty thousand die

Cosmic Harlequin

Hey ho, lo and behold the cosmic harlequin/Entertain us to our disdain, comic harlequin/Some kind of costume is all you need you jester man/Call me charlatan, call me a king, each way I win/Many like me hold sway over you and other poor clowns/Your red nose glows and your big mouth turns down/We will run you out of every city, village and town/Here is another like you and he is wearing a gown/Bounce your balloon over to me and I will make it burst/If there’s a chance to skip the queue then I am the first/But you stood right up to me and showed me a better face/You clung to your flag of dignity at the top of the hill/You are the righteous winner in this particular race/Of pushing and shoving I have had my fill/Transformation beckons, rehabilitation

Blue Eyed Girl in Belsize Park

When I could climb the highest rocks and iron my flowing hair//You had an infant on your hip while we breathed the London air/A boy with magic fingers is playing all the hours/ His quest for perfection very similar to ours/We went back to our rented rooms with walls of every hue/Orange and a khaki green and the sheets were far from new/The kitchen was a cavern in a house in Belsize Park/You never knew who might be making toast there in the dark/On the smutty ceiling the grease of many fries/Cigarettes and other things burning up our eyes/Him and her were squealing like pigs within a pen/So I crept upstairs and stared at those confusing walls again/We talked of the inspiring sounds we recently had heard/Who had a brilliant record sleeve and who wrote a clever word/That world was full of shapely clouds in a sky that was benign/Our old mugs of steaming tea, too skint for drinking wine/ We’ve been to too many wakes in the intervening years/But you still sparkle and survive despite the usual fears

Child of Knife and Fist

Marching to a dictatorial tune the child of knife and fist/Ruled with pen and sharpened sword/Fostering nationalism/And sweeping militarism/Spreading fear and ever violent extremism/Met his end open-mouthed in the piazza/And then a woman of her own accord/Shot him dead again with five bullets for each son/She was never going to miss/Strutting his stuff to middle age forged a peacock so proud/He approved of women who knew their place/But one widow jumped and drew a gun/From her Irish black veil/Fired a bullet which grazed his face/Onwards then unholy Roman Empire/Gathering supersonic momentum/Trumpets blaring loud/Democracy was eaten/Protestors sorely beaten/The worst of those as yet unborn/Stand on the very same platform

A Cyclical Thing

Summer solstice draws ever near/But demons still swoop from the sky/Arcadian trip to a standing stone ring/Might bring to the fore the reason why/She visits the darkness every year/Is it merely a cyclical thing?/She leaves behind the city noise/The fumes and babble around her head/Infernal thoughts clash in the air/Especially those that she misread/The damned ones are what she destroys/She wants to kill them stony dead/Weaving through the yonder sphere/Her black beasts fight each other above/They reel and dive and dart and dash/World-weary war or labour of love/Now the landscape of her mind is clear/Those villains burn and then they crash

Rocks on the Beaten Path

Clawing a path up the mountainside/Hairpin bends and steep incline/Nowhere to shelter or hide/Boulder after boulder in a line/I did not commit the sins of Sisyphus/Who rolls a boulder for all eternity/His misdeeds utterly treasonous/Whereas mine were far too small to see/Push that prickly gorse out of the way/I know I will reach my goal in the end/It might take many nights and many days/To the crown of the peak I will ascend/Snow covers all the mountain top/But a sign of life wriggles at my feet/Breathtaking views just never stop/They make my weary heart skip a beat

Girl of the House

Bodies in the kitchen garden/Dig the hole ourselves/For the stench I beg your pardon/ The old sod is overwhelmed/Standing in my lowly garments/My eyes behold the famished fields/Where is the recruiting sergeant?/He might measure out a meagre meal/Ai ai ai ai ai/The man I called my father/Is riding the crest of a wave/He knows the sharks will gather/    If his bag of bones finds a sea grave/And me I have the flattest belly/It fits into a tiny dress/I am narrower than the family Kelly/I could fold into the linen press/Ai ai ai ai ai/I can count the ribs on old Jemima/She is patient in a dark backroom/Her spirit has never been finer/Now she’s faced with impending doom/She will die like her waxen mistress/Lying cold upon our mother’s cot/Soon they’ll join my little sisters/And a million more left to rot/Ai ai ai ai ai.

The Stag and the Hen

Down the dingy stairs in the bustle of midnight/On my cautious own eying up the pairs/Sliding on the cobbles and queasy to my bones/I find a most inglorious sight/Behold the foamy runnel where despair and hope will drain/A woman kneeling down in a dank and dewy lane/Her man goes clickety click but doesn’t thank her for the trouble/And deserts her in the pouring rain/The stag and the hen drown in the black stuff/Sing their hearts out in the foggy dew/That tune lingers in the air/It warms the blood of all those fervent travellers passing through/The finest of intentions at the birth of the night/Are fading in the thrall of every fermented brew/A fumble and stumble in declining light/How to judge too many or too few

 Sing Like His Brother

Among the stones of the dead /I sweep up curling leaves/Birds wheel up above me/And oppressive silence grows/Then along trips a fine fellow/With a song or two up his sleeve/He tells to me he sings like his brother/Who I should rightly know/Oh sing like your brother, oh sing like your brother/Sing like your brother, please do/You raise your voice like no other, your voice like no other/And the wind it did howl and it blew/Oh sing like your brother, sing like your brother/Do it for yourself and only you/But the true and peerless master of the art/ Is lying mute in his wintry grave

Breaking Soul

Crunching pebbles beneath my feet/Oily waters lap from the lake/Hatching insects in midsummer heat/A thousand wings on my ear beat/There is someone who calls my name/It is a spectre across the lake/On viscous air your faint call came/Mosquitoes whine in a cruel game/Breaking soul, my breaking soul/The ice pick strikes a gaping hole/Place your velvet hand on this heart/Make it stop, then make it start/Gallant dear fade away/And give me peace/Your image is locked/No sign of release/Your shadow floats/Along the shore/I cannot see you anymore/Within the mire of dreamy sleep/I plunge into the teeming lake/My swimming strokes flail in the deep/The gravelled banks are far too steep

In The Land Of Persepolis

An ocean of doubt and a sea of fear/Drowns the dark-eyed lady/She wails inside the thickest stone/But her captors turn the lock and do not hear/In the land of Persepolis where once was a throne/And punishment severe/The shining of their golden age/Beams down on powerful men/Women walk small steps behind/Languishing in the shadows and the shade/ Colourful views must never spring to mind/Aspirations unmade/I would give you all the ancient marble/And the orchids in every garden/Oils and exotic carpets/If only I’d be free/         She is a pawn in a global game/Living her life alone/Crying out please can I see my child/Oh budding infant daughter with an angel’s name/Unfairly reproached, unjustly reviled/     For political gain

 The Owl Of Saint-Chartier

A summery drive to Saint-Chartier/Fields of blazing sunflowers ripple by/The streets overflow with joyous pipers/Underneath a cloudless royal blue sky/We dance and sway to the cornemuse/The doedelzak and hurdy-gurdy too/In the beam of the moon out flew the owl/From a hollow in a tall and shady tree/Over the château and our pointing fingers/And players at a spectacular jubilee/We dance and sway to the cornemuse/The doedelzak and hurdy-gurdy too/Friendship is a bed of thorny roses/So we scream our cruel words nose to nose/But life is too short for disharmony/Let it go we said, we must surely let it go/We dance and sway to the cornemuse/The doedelzak and hurdy-gurdy too/The cows came ambling home that morn/When we stumbled to our tents in sickly light/The owl swooped once way above/A wondrous thing to witness on that night/We dance and sway to the cornemuse/The doedelzak and hurdy-gurdy too

Listening To Aimee

Hairy old blanket caught my eye//The plainest of wool scratchy and coarse/Like the ones on my iron bed in years gone by/Your chest is sounding so much worse/You told me you used to be a man of the world/And I possess the gaiety of a comely young girl/The music in my ears is justly glorified/Her songs ride on a wave that hasn’t reached the shore/Who is it you ask that has my smile so wide?/There is no Macarena on her dancefloor/I can give you coins to keep the hunger at bay/But that will only get you past this one and only day/      Soaring guitars both rhythm and lead/Empty cans at noon clatter at my feet/Your red and chafed hands will make my heart bleed/Mine are always gloved in the snow and the sleet/    One day I won’t see you when I walk this way again/Your chances unforthcoming like other homeless men/The storms of winter have come and gone/But I will not forget you a man of fifty-one

Oh Father Who Is Not Holy

Oh father who is not holy/Never was and never will be/You have cowed your child//Oh father who is not holy/Never was and never will be/You have cowed your child/ Oh father who is not holy/Never was and never will be/Neither meek nor mild/Something in your blood runs wild/Across the kitchen table you spat spittle in her face/Milked the teats of human kindness/Using all your livid words and every devious device/Pretending to see double and making out to be mindless/Congenial for a little while before the tempers burst/You will never earn forgiveness/Becoming ever bolder as the storm brews worse/Behind closed doors and four walls there is no witness

Hark The Mission Herald

In no other place is the battle of the gods fought/With more zeal than Achill Isle/You will woo us with a poem and the warmth of a coat/But we can’t trust your evangelical smile/And your pledge you’ll not resort to guile/We are pure and simple girls from a village deserted/With a fervent wish to own our souls/You have seen our wasted figures so you bribe us with your soup/But we’re too proud to offer up our begging bowl/And we pray that Lady Mary will console/The body and the blood are consecrated and consumed/And we obey him with the sceptre in his hand/We may perish ere long as our harvests have not bloomed/And breathe our last before the crown gives us command/Hark the mission herald is calling out for converts/We withstand, we will withstand/The founder of your mission has a cultivated garden/Which is beauteous and easy on the eye/He forgives us false worship and can teach many lessons/If we offer hearts and minds for him to buy/Don’t your flowers smell like ours beneath one sky?/We are poor and ragged orphans with hunger aplenty/In a ravaged land ruled by cruelty/Why would we heartily embrace the faith of your king?/When we can sit atop the cliffs and roam free/And behold the leaping creatures in the sea

The Floppy Ears I Love So Much

Way back when I was a kid my mother nurtured me/I thought that sweetness surrounded her in a world forever kind/But she cut me sharp to the bone one day and I felt no longer carefree/My father kept on watching the game and to my confusion he was blind/She never fell down on the chesterfield or tripped on the shags in the hall/I shed no tears for them but for Tramp and Floyd I cried hard the day through/And I played my grandma’s piano in the basement away from it all/Barney had floppy ears I love so much and would never betray me or you/He ran round the backyard as I recall/And jumped over the swimming pool/He never acted up mean and never left me blue

Saint Begnet of Thorn Island

Rusted bindings in the Martello/If the great Napoleon had waged a war/And a church for the virgin saint Begnet/Pure beauty of legend and folklore/The King of Norway offered marriage/But she sailed away to Albion instead/An abbess in a lifetime of service/Never lay down in a conjugal bed/A castle in her name/In the Viking seaport of Deilginis/And her chapel on Thorn Island/On many a colour postcard/Pilgrims took water from the holy well/Soldiers and sailors, fishers, lifeguards/And a herd of goats have tales to tell/An angel gave a child a sacred bracelet/This happened in the 7th Century/Marked with a cross for her vocation/Which she wore when she roamed the Irish Sea/A castle in her name/In the Viking seaport of Deilginis/And her chapel on Thorn Island/On many a colour postcard/Pilgrims took water from the holy well/Soldiers and sailors, fishers, lifeguards/And a herd of goats have tales to tell

 When Magpies Squabble

You waltzed in the door one day/With your curly hair all shorn/You gave away your older clothes/And told me they’d been worn/Posters on the yellow wall/Are not cherished any more/And magpies squabble on your windowsill/They just know they’re being ignored/Know they’re being ignored/You sailed out from the harbour/With a burden on your back/Your cast-offs went to charity/In a heavy duty sack/Stagnant air underground/Lies black upon your skin/But you just clean it off at night/And let your new friends in/You let your new friends in/One for sorrow/Two for joy/Three for that girl/Could it be tomorrow?/She’ll write the words/I know my place within this world                   

Sylvia's Deadbolt

The train that carries all your words has crashed in the dark/You were minding me in The People’s Park/Under a grainy black and white sun/You grasped every chain of reason/Before almost anyone/Hurrying away from the choppy sea/Toiling up that murderous hill every year/Columns of figures and ancient machines/Only once did I catch you drop one quick tear/Who could fathom your introspection?/We laid the table and lit the fire/For you could manage every other work/Boil and bake, wash, enlighten and inspire/All those prizes that you lightly won/A box of snapshots locked in your brain/The shutters slam down and windows are barred/As you physically come undone

Green Of Heart

Drifting through fields of crowded flowers/Until they bowed their petalled heads/Matching yellow cowslips with my shoes/Shepherd’s purse in flashes white and poppies red/And the cobalt sky above was not just blue/Nettles failed to sting so entranced was I/No road to navigate or town to close me in/Patchwork fields stretched far beyond my eye/Dismay and bother held each other’s hands/And wheeled away in a departing dizzy spin/Green of heart

In The Snowmelt

White spruce, pine and cedar/And where tongues of fjords converse/Lonesome rambler roves in the wild/Across The Pacific Province traverse/Falling on stumps hidden in the snowmelt/Where loggers have done their kill/Navigate the jags of downstream ice/No pelts to keep out the chill/Forage berries and edible roots/He lets small creatures still to roam/The spirit bear and harlequin duck/Only he will view their home/Falling on stumps hidden in the snowmelt/Where loggers have done their kill/Navigate the jags of downstream ice/No pelts to keep out the chill

Hunting Down

Little man, his arms around/A fawn in death and not in life/Handed down from father/Who taught you how to use a hunting knife/You do not hunger for any harvest/Smear of blood is on your face/Your journey leads to an epiphany/Your friends will find no hiding place/Roaming wild and hunting down/Sea of demons let you drown/Wrap that piece in a softened cloth/Bury it deep in that wildwood hole/Point it at the outstretched tree/Blast away its rustic soul/Who is there to offer help?/No one cares for your thorny plight/Open up the eager floodgates/And pour out your wrath and might/Roaming wild and hunting down/Sea of demons let you drown

The Road We Know

Along the road we know/The strobing sun is setting/Buffeted by blow/By wind and by wetting/Sing louder than the lashing and peer through the rain/Can’t wait to get there by four wheels or train/Along the road we know/Clouds are reshaping/The distance is aglow/With a city that is waking/Words pouring down like hailstones on our roof/Strung out on time enough to tell the truth/Along the road we know/Along the road we go

Swans They Are A-Feeding

Tell me of your dream/Where you can glimpse the world that’s coming/Watch the swans a-feeding fish, oh my/                  There’s a tortoise playing ball/And a cat that suckles chicks/See the weasel on a bird flying high/You are a boy who wears a cocked hat/Pointing at the night sky/Where the moon will have a man walking by/You tell me he will soar there/  In a fiery machine/Waving good old terra firma goodbye/With a solitary tear in his eye/Your midnight musing is fantastical to me/I’m a god-fearing girl who simply cannot believe/I may travel by road/And along shiny rails/But never with my head in the clouds/The smoke of battle rises/And the bullets are a-spinning/Deadly weaponry of war is far too loud/Tell me of your nightmare/Where men with swathed faces/March those in bright robes to face the knife/Will people of science and learning/orture one another/And send them left or right to end their life/Or dwell on crueller ways to make them die?/Your midnight musing is fantastical to me/I’m a god-fearing girl who simply cannot believe/If the waters gush and the winds do howl and cry/Even king and queens will bow down in splendour to grieve/There’s a painting in the gallery of a garden of earthly delights/That also parades a vision of freakery and fright

Pathways

Pathways strewn with rocks to the sea/Pathways/Each step of intention weary and weighty/And blinded by heat haze/ Blue on the surface and black down below/Where are the colours I used to know?/My crimson heart is a faded rose/This is the winding path I chose/Here is the siren singing for me/To lead us astray/What I would give for the shade of a tree/The wide ocean is playing with me/A gravel walk would be safer than this stormy water/The fire of a furnace a swifter slaughter/Glint of green draws me back to the shore/There is always a backdoor

Memorial

The full Spring draws in tides of gentle wind,/A mighty sun infusing earth and sky/But I have come, through cataclysmic night,/Too late for my goodbye./Through sombre windows seen, the almond glows,/Scattering bitter gladness on the grass./Inside these walls, where double silence wells,/My buried ages pass./Upstairs alone, the source of silence sleeps-/A darling face whose wisdom is release./From soundless chamber to the waiting Spring/Climb sheer the fields of peace. (Poem by P.A.T. O'Donnell)

Redbreast In A Rowan Tree

Redbreast in a rowan tree/Hung with droplets of blood/Vixen screams like a banshee/Worm wriggled in the mud/Tried to pull a thorn with his black bill/ From the crown of a man on a crucifix/ The spreading red on that deathly hill/Flushed the chest of that bird right quick/Lift up your voice little songster/And join in the chorus with me

Sleeping On Strange Pillows

She always wanted to come in from the biting cold/Face down in music drenching her hungry soul/That child lay long in a sterilised hospital bed/Longing for escape through the songs in her head/Craving crayons in a big box with silver and gold/To draw out those pictures that will be a sight to behold/So many faces you have loved are in in your words/You opened your mouth wide and out flew a songbird/Constantly in the darkness, desperate to break free/Sleeping in a cave, washing your hair in the sea/Living in the birthplace of Western civilisation/Then a spreading blue, a lasting wondrous creation/Sleeping on strange pillows she would write one day/About an aviator whose Electra lost its way/She could do just about every damn artistic endeavour/That fine fattened up body of work is going to last forever/If you play the fool on an invite to her music room/She might bark and bite in a voice that’s out of tune/The crown of flowers that she used to wear/Cannot be seen now but we all know that it’s there/Constantly in the darkness, desperate to break free/Seeping in a cave, washing your hair in the sea/Living in the birthplace of Western civilisation/Then a spreading blue, a lasting wondrous creation

An Empire In Its Glory

Close those books until another day/There is an answer to your prayer/The house is full of mould and giant cobwebs/      And a mawkish air/Sign your name and state your age/The paper will grow old but never die/For an empire in its glory is bound to own you/Until the seas run dry/A lad who kneels in church is full of worship/The clink of his buttons so percussive/He will bang the drum and march with a brass band/But never combative/He left behind a faith and family/      He clenched a ball of sodden earth/And shouted loud to the raging sky/In the land of his birth/Fold your kit and move along/On desert sands and tangled wildwoods/And when the wars are coursing through your veins/Remember childhood

The Pull and Drag Blues

Walking in the wildest city/Tearing down the danger signs/I don’t want your utmost pity/Up my sleeve a flickering, glittering knife/Reaching for fingers to defend my life/The trouble is my second skin makes me pretty/Everyone is on the make/Down along Kotze Street/Surrounded by reprobates/Two hours sleep and then squiggly, wiggly lines/Words on the page are driving me blind/Clattering keys jerk my temples awake/Threw my lot with a troubadour/He plucked those strings in the hotel bar/The doe-eyed girls always wanted more/All his talk falls like silvery shards of rain/Only a few of us could explain/His come and go would have your heart full sore/The air he breathed was a poisoned gas/A snake is squeezing his life away/I severed its head with a broken glass/Dead to me three rowdydowdy decades past/That lying back on a strip of grass/Friend I am but another poolroom regret

The Devil's Trumpet is a Witch's Weed

Night breaks over blackened lungs/Insects come to call/You want to smell the devil’s trumpet/But you dare not breathe at all/The chair rolls forward wheeling faster/Each flash is but a year/Heading for the young ones’ ledge/There is no time left for fear/Regret is wrapped in futile defiance/For the luscious days you devoured/A little less when your face was smooth/And we would not be laying down our flowers

Cruel Mist Roll Away

Fog is fluffing up behind your eyes/Thunder roars a word in your ears/What is that lovely stone upon your breast?/It is the colour of a cloudless sky/Why should I think the sun is up?/You say all plaintive and with some snap/Suddenly the cruel mist rolls away/And the messenger says to drain your cup/Big bad wave is crashing down upon my beach/Try to scream but you’ve lost the power of common speech/Lie you down on a bed of hay/Or is it just your garden lawn?/You see a field of stallions blur and race/In fact the farm is fifty miles away/The mist comes in and covers you in eider down

(Near Dark) Apartment 6

Who lives up those marble stairs?/Behind the Georgian door/He folds his cape around his frame/He has the blackest hair/Open all the windows floors one to five/Tie back the drapes with satin bows/Look at number six blind firmly down/Shadow of a man up to his tricks/ Who bathes at three in ghostly light?/Behind the damask walls/Did he use a cutthroat blade?/Will he teach his dog to bite?/ Hanging from the rooftop upside down/I’m itching from a liquid sweat/Can he hear my false heart pound?/Does he parade in his dressing gown?/ Who has never been found out/Throwing caution to the wind?/Can’t quite creep close enough/To prove him bloody /beyond doubt/Unhallowed music floats down to me/Near dark I hear a screech and a scrape/Does he kill in apartment six?/He’s playing the fiddle fiendishly

Glendalough Carved in an Age of Ice

Is the ancient track under high mountains a sacred as it once was?/Two lakes lap, lapping violet from a long mile away/One is dark and peaty with a white sandy edge/One is dark and peaty with a white sandy edge/The other has a marshy fringe and ruinous fen/The other has a marshy fringe and ruinous fen/A dipper flies over white lilies and bottle sedge/And driftwood like antlers/Driftwood like antlers/Church after church with lead, zinc and silver/Carvings on the chancel arch/Is there a giver?

Account For That Day

Oh break the door/Oh break the door/Break the door down/Break the door down/Take it outside/Take it outside/Your hue and cry/Your do or die/You’ve silenced the kid/Silenced the kid/The power is out/The power is out/Their faces are green/Their faces are green/When they take them away/To account for that day/Words will not be made to drip from those jaws/Tongues will never make a slip on a point of law

Brew the Sequence

Footfall softly on a bed of clay/Nouns rain behind me on this firework day/Take them back tomorrow creep, creep and crawl away/      Radiating sorrow that moves in for to stay/Fall on your sword why don’t you, why don’t you go down on bended knee?/Sheath up your arrows please please please before I reach that hunting tree/Count out your words in a mealy-mouthed measure/And you be transfigured for everyone to see/

Here Come The Rambling Men

Fire out of the den/Their mam she’s lying dead/Here come the rambling men/To send her off in scarlet threads/Beeswax in her nose/ And two gold ear hoops/Above her finest clothes/Strike up the fiddling troupe/Stags charge through the glen/Shiny eyes are wide with fright/ Here come the rambling men/With painted plates to the burial site/The old trees are rattled too/With mighty lament/Beast and infant know it’s true/Caravan is for cremation/Here come the rambling men/Here come the rambling men

Glendalough Carved

Forest fox raises a complex voice/Under the steeply pitched roof of St. Kevin’s Kitchen/Thin layer of mist swelling and moist/Dampens flowers that faded when the swallows left again/When the swallows left back then/Over hermits processing with holy ghost men/The abbot is cold within his lakeside bed/His intentions honourable, his visions pure/Starving himself of daily bread/He cannot have drowned a lustful woman/For her condition that is an ungodly cure/Those words are in a song but not a brochure

Pull Up our Hoods

For all you, for all you, for all you, for all you, we did it/Learned the lines, put in time, obeyed the sign, I knew it/Not for praise, not for praise, not for praise, we worked it/And so the sea a perfect blue on the day that’s in it/Cold eyes loom, cold eyes loom, cold eyes loom, there we’ve said it/Pull up our hoods for the greater good, warmed again within it/Someone else will make your bed and want you, want you so much in it/Walk on by, walk on by, walk on by, walk on by, walk it/Just for you, just for you, just for you, just for you, you do it/Ringing bell, we wake well, now you take your spell and shove it/Fingers close round something hard, I’m on my guard and I speak into it/We drop that stone far down the stream and are not tumbling on with it

The Reign of the White Plague

Spit into the littered river/Beg you do not do it right next to me/Cannot climb your crowded stairs/To your sickening bed/Many pale and little sisters/Consumed all in their tender years/Sitting still on their shaking chairs/Indiscriminate white plague has spread/You will dress in a fine lace collared gown/Then you can be gently washed and laid down/Dublin City and in old London Town/Statisticians are reeling round/Something wild is racing along the wind/Chilling to the bone and on sweating skin

 Across The Blackened Fields
Blackberry bush plucked quite bare/But not one nettle patch to sting our legs/Herring and mackerel sport in the bay/There are no fishing nets to spare/Lie you down on a bed of straw/Or beneath the soil in a narrow ditch/Forget about the blackened fields/The sea-grass and tubers raw/No one sings and no one dances
And no one plays the pipes/Rose spots bloom on many chests/And wrinkles on the hand/Green upon our dying lips/No priest to lay us to rest/No one sings and no one dances/And no one plays the pipes/Goose and gull fly away/The barque and brig sail away

Golden Carpet
Hurry yourself alongside icy water raging out from the glen/Thickened up with chestnut leaves discouraging the race/This golden carpet you can not ride for it will ditch you when you least know when/When the reddest setter plunges in resist the urge to leap/He will fix you with his pleading eyes while he swirls downstream/But that dashing hound he can clamber out while you go drowning in the deep/Let the golden carpet go on rushing by and save bravado for your dreams/Woollen threads and rushes green/Tangled in a weaving machine

Blood On His Horns
The killer and his entourage sacrifice the bull/Lances in his powerful neck are pointing at the sky/His death in the afternoon is a bloody ancient art/Mules drag him around the ring while he is yet to die/An ear is sliced triumphantly/And the blood on his horns/The blood on his horns/Flows copiously/The fire bull wears an iron crown adorned with flaming balls/He runs amok through narrow streets and shakes his blazing head/Deafened by the crackers and the baying of the crowd/He longs for his heart to stop and all that he has bled/The living firework detonates/And the blood on his horns/The blood on his horns/Coagulates/
When our brothers were little lads/They coveted the black montera/The suit of lights and a sword for play and threat/When our sisters were little lasses/They clicked their castanets/Swished flamenco skirts and stamped their heels/They prayed their pets would never suffer/Nor the bull in the field/The living firework detonates/And the blood on his horns/The blood on his horns/Coagulates/  

Strawberry Wine
A sultry evening years ago/I closed my eyes in a bed of fern/Tiny sprites in the mighty oak/Viewed the woodland scene below/The river master’s daughter sylph/With emerald hair and waxen skin/Flickered on this sleeping form/My life force wearing down and thin/A face with far too perfect features/Contours of sublime design/Were they supernatural creatures/Offering me strawberry wine?/I rose up into their slipstream/Flesh and blood lay on the ground/Flying towards the glorious horizonAnointed queen for one night crowned/I could see the wraiths of water/In amongst papyrus sedge/Ghostly fingers waving at me
Pointing to the forest edge/Distant from my earthly companions/The sylph became a willow tree/I drank in all beneath her boughs/And saw each thing I wanted to see/Ride my friends on winged dogs/Tip your brow in greeting to me/For once we speak in tongues togetherIn a radiant harmony/When I awoke there lay the forest pool/Rippling under phosphorescent light/Drawing to a close this midsummer night

Come All Ye Malcontents
Come all you malcontents walk among the weeds on the garden path/Down from your crumbling towers you are going to be led astray/On the high streets you learned with your mothers spit out years of wrath/This is one misshapen day/Cover your heads with angry masks and roar like wounded bears/Burn down your own weekend history and turn your backs on every prayer/The fruit of the phone has spread the word /everywhere/Falling far from grace/Hang your wretched face/Breed them and weep/Lead them like sheep/Bleed them and sweep/Up

The Day The Winged Fury Came
Ear to the ground on a bed of broken brick/Incapable of sound the air is thick/The drum it split and blood lies spent and slick/The roof next door is on the avenue trees/Tiles on the floor in a terracotta sea/Washing on the line is flying free/Mother waves from yonder marsh/Her mouth an open scream/The wind that whips is cold and harsh/A cataclysmic scene/The bus will come another day/To people standing at the stop/And a jar of bulls-eyes in demand again/At the local corner shop/The churchyard will be crowded soon/With cousins in their graves/The wail of sirens loom/To fetch away the brave

Hart Fell
Many fair days/I walk by the larch/Soft green needles/Don’t hurt me/Beautiful boat-building tree/
Chill in the air/Fall on the march/Yellow needles/Thick on the ground/Felling me the slow way down/
The golden trumpets of spring are mute/The sweet pea climbs no more/Winter comes for me/Freezing my sanity/Tossing the ball/Giving my all/The dog in the field/Delighted me/Skittering free/He plays away/A greater game/I wait in vain/He’s found a fitter friend/I’m too broken for him to mend/Winter comes for me/Freezing my sanity/Find a fitter friend/I’m too broken for you to mend

White Lilies
When Juno laid the milky road/The strongest son was at her breast/When several droplets fell to earth/The lily grew as white as snow/A tender girl roamed the wilds/Safe inside her spun cocoon/Lilies circling far and wide/Kept her innocent as a child/But she was drawn to blocks of steel/With ornamental trees inside/The ground beneath her booted feet/Covered with a thousand wheels/The grain she knew from country fields/And the sweet white grape upon the vine/Passed her lips both day and night/Until she lost her temperance shield/Tried to pick a bunch of lilies/The helm of darkness came her way/Wound them round into a wreath/Took her to the kingdom of the dead that day/Wandering with the souls of the damned/She prayed to every god on high/Took her penance for salvation/Stepped to the slaughter like a lamb/
When the corn of the old crop lies on the field/The mare-headed mother cried the words/Ascend to me from your dank bastille/Come hear the song of morning birds/And there among the lilies white/There roams a tender girl at play/Her demons stagger over the ridge/Back to their dirt pit far away/A garland of lilies upon my brow/And one for my dear when I give him my vow

Under The Churchtower
Five little maids in their seersucker dresses/One will hoist a barrel and another will count/One for the veil and two giving lessons/The other with a baby in the baptismal fount/Three hearty ladies carry the flowers/We all fall down/Pray for two dears under the church tower/All fall down/Five young blades exploring a cavern/One will trap the hare and another will plough/A physician and a clerk and two in the tavern/The youngest in uniform on the ship’s bow/Four whiskered gentlemen carry the casket/We all fall down/The naval wife casts a rose from her basket/We all fall down

Night Spell
Feel like shapeshifting/The beam is on the path/Drifting in its yellow light/Cleansed in celestial bath/
Just the moon and me/Just the moon and me/Bathe in a lunar sea/In a lunar sea/Just the moon and me/In a lunar sea/Oceans move in their mysterious ways/Commanded by the moon night and day/I long to scale the crustal highlands/And stare into the pitted craters/Dive into the impact basins/Selenic island, selenic island/
Just the moon and me/Just the moon and me/Bathe in a lunar sea/In a lunar sea

Living On The Concrete Path
Big sister has a blue rinsed head/A goose down duvet on her bed/Powerful mower in the shed/Solid oak with books she’s read/Diaries with all she ever said/Little brother can’t lay his head/On the streets he is easily led/At fifty years he’s underfed/The blight upon his chest has spread/He begs the cold sleep of the dead/ )
 

Fleeing Limbus

Fast across sharp rocks/They want to slice my knees/Cut them, gash and graze/Feed them to the seas/Flying like the gulls above/Who shriek like demons crazed/At me and the rats in their dark little caves/Sheltering from one hundred degrees/Fleeing the heat of Limbus/Lonely Limbo's dark and sticky strand/Flapping, floundering, fleet no longer/The cloven hoof is stirring up the sand/Clouds over his unholy nimbus/Maybe this is demerara sugar/Slurried guilt in my worst dream/I have done nothing too wicked/To warrant a fate so extreme/Fleeing the heat of Limbus/Lonely Limbo's dark and sticky strand/Flapping, floundering, fleet no longer/The cloven hoof is stirring up the sand/Clouds over his unholy nimbus (PRS for Music)

Act Of Contrition

I am heartily sorry for having offended you/I detest all my little sins since birth/I dread the loss of our tiny bit of heaven on earth/And fear the pains of hell when we argue/And all that I lack/Should be considered in this act/Of contrition in my mission to appease you/There is seductive drama in being aggrieved/But all that hullabaloo was ill conceived

Hedge End Day

A weakling sun struggles to break through/At the close of this grim Hedge End day/Quite soon the trains carry more than a few/And the motorway crammed with hard workers/Whose lowly pleasures are too far away/The crackling radio keeps those whims at bay/But now I am scenting a bonny bunch of roses/And when hedges blur it gets me rambling back/Knees pointing up a steep hill mercifully short/They have forgotten me on the cross-country track/Sound drowning my ears over my ragged breath/Through farm and woodland, bridge and open road/I run on the flattening grass and feel twigs crack/Falling behind the others in my subterranean thoughts/ 

Harbour Boy

Tow headed harbour boy who could not hear/You faced the dangerous dive and did not fear/We quaked in our flip-flops/Thrilled by your long drop/You fashioned a set of magic steps/From the grassy verge to impress/You passed the test, every test/Who cared that you were deaf/I was drawn to your garbled speech/Your dazzling displays beyond my reach/No child poked fun/We could not do what you had done/
You fashioned a set of magic steps/From the grassy verge to impress/You passed the test, every test/Who cared that you were deaf/Some thought you slow, but I know/You swam under the boats below/A place only the boldest go

No Meek Chrism

I sailed away on a slender thought/Mushroom into a brimming dream/Tiny threads were finely wrought/Into a crystal cut scene/Magnify the lord the mothers said/Shrouded in their sacred gowns/Speech that skimmed my Cecilia head/Smashing Virgin Mary's crown/I confess I have departed/For the glory and the shine/Of the magic spinning disc/That could one day be mine/And all that I will suffer/Will torment me to my rest/I recall the robed sisters' words/And the way that they were blessed/I arrived on the wings of hope/Dressed in patch and print and pleat/Ready for the subway smoke/But not the burn of defeat/The weight and wisdom of all my time/Is lifting up my leaden feet/Universe spare me a dime/To fan my flaming heat/Habits darkest and of the modest/Deserving flowers of the rarest/Their gift of space/Their friendly face/Their state of grace/I recall the robed sisters' words/And the way I have been blessed

The Plant and The Page

After the rigours of state to state/The drag of coast to coast/The golden hill could no longer wait/Snowdonian healing host/A stride in the woods with the blue merle/By the side of the rocky plant/Hats off and ideas begin to unfurl/Castanets and candlelit chant/Electrical help is not at hand/And water does not gush free/Isolation is a maid yours to command/And become what you want her to be/The man who put his words to the page/Was the seed planted by his father/Watered by mother's tears in the age/When the occult had harvest to gather/The hangman appears on a tarot card/And he looms by the gallows pole/Waiting in vain to hand out a pardon/In return for silver and Welsh gold/Sounds heard down in the kitchen sink/Spoons and fingers snap/Things that give off the right sounding clink/Deserve a round of handclaps/

Come Unto Me

Mother could not face the task/Despite the holy words bestowed/Brother ripped from sister's clasp/And set upon a narrow road/Down the deep dark winding stair/The beating demon lay/Foul of mind with hands in prayer/All decency in disarray/Will I ever lie in springy heather/Or walk a dog beneath the moon?/Oh no, I fear that it is never/Will I run the egg and spoon/Do you lad take this old John Thomas/To be thy bedded lover?/For you will not fulfil your promise/Nor marry with any other/Will I ever lie in springy heather/Or walk a dog beneath the moon?/Oh no, I fear that it is never/Will I run the egg and spoon/His life flickered to its dismal close/The plagueful day descended/Into blessed night his spirit rose/To be one day remembered/Will I ever lie in springy heather/Or walk a dog beneath the moon?/Oh no, I fear that it is never/Will I run the egg and spoon/For my soul flits like a white feather/On my dark journey far too soon

Fires Down Under

A million bushes crackle and burn/Beneath the roaring of a red rage/Carpeting bracken and feathery fern/Are ashy clouds on a Victorian stage/House is all a smoulder/No home to living creature/Flame snakes in its crazy, crazy, crazy dance/Black flakes/Beast and human charge and flee/Failing hearts ablaze with fear/Greasy grey as far as the eye sees/The spark starter sheds no tears/House is all a smoulder/No home to living creature/Flame snakes in its crazy, crazy, crazy dance/No firebreaks

Song of the Gael

Arís arís he hungers for the brisk Atlantic shore/The sounding bell tower and mother tongue/The peaty flame and old wives' lore/He calls forth the fields he ripened among/The tune filled biting nights of his beggared boyhood/Upturned faces so pinched, raw-boned and pale/Cold feet are scattered to gather wood/For evening's thrall to the lilting of songs of the Gael/They sing songs of the Gael/They tell of all the old tales/For him to stow them away/Ciúnas ciúnas they cry out when he steps away/Our boy takes leave this day so youthful and slight/The elders wave while rowdy children play/He is gone forever more into an uncertain night/Dimmed is the king's shilling and long gone/And his true faith discarded far in the past/Lying in the liquid grip of a requiem song/Those songs of the Gael are now within his grasp/They sing songs of the Gael
They tell of all the old tales/For him to stow them away

The Gay Balladeer

I'm so very pleased to meet you said the gay balladeer/I am charmed by your acquaintance and delightful company/But you have found me wanting as we walked the road together/You found me someone else, thought me rather queer/Half-breed dog or rough tomcat, does it matter in the end?/I'm good enough to know or I'm not/Sing you a fine lament or sing a patriot's song/Can't you read my body language says I am not right nor are you wrong?/On corners left and right crossing landscapes of this earth/Will you wave me from your window at my partner or my wife?/In the time of twenty twenty-eight will you greet me at your gate/Or will you turn me and my kind away?/In trucks and trainloads, refugees from our life/Living with our neighbours through death and throughout birth/My aims are universal said the gay balladeer/I bring yesterday to tomorrow with each passing new year/But your greeting is not quite on your lips/I can walk with you part of the way/Or on every step of your straight path/We will speak a language that you like/I'm a good companion to swim with deep/Beneath the swirling seas you fear/I only wish to glance into your culture/We can go along with Eos and Hespera/Or set sail on passing ships/Go along with Eos and Hespera/Or set sail on passing ships

March of the Strawberry Blondes

Oh sister once burned at the stake/For your bloody hair glinting in the sun/The proverb says that such a one
Could never a Russian saint make/The rusty fox behind redbrick wall/Saw red and grey squirrels brawl/
Oh sister with your burnished mane/It will fade in time but not disappear/Forevermore we know the fiery name/Of the titian queen, warring pioneer/So do not mock the ginger heads/Their ancient wondrous shades of red

Pointed Thinking Cap

All my faces to the world/Each one hiding something/Don't want you to see the girl/Crying over nothing/
Got a hat for every problem/So I pull on my purple pointed thinking cap/To brew a bout of witchy feminism/Green fool's cap for the leaky jealousy tap/And rainbow tam for an air of mysticism/If you see the one that I am/You won't be offering apple pie/Your loaded weapon going bang/When you catch me out in a lie/I'm no good to you dead/The black skullcap of Machiavellian mischief/Suits me well when I am being shrewish/An Englishman's white-knotted handkerchief/For hot humiliation when I am being foolish/I draw the line at the dunce's cap/I'm brighter than the average sap/Ring them jester cap bells/Give me heaven, give me hell

The Flight of the Valiant Earls

(The ancient Brehon law unjustly swept away/Scholar and bard with only English words to say/Battle and skirmish scorching northern land/And Crown planters granted the upper hand/Powers of lord and chieftain diminish in a day/Spanish sailors fail to join forces in the fray/Gathering their goods the Earls and retinue/Fled the lough forever to an exile's lonely view/Their gold cross shone beneath the salty sails/Glinting off the waves in its precious cargo's trail/To France and Flanders and along the Swiss pass/Whose wintry claws seized their fortune in icy grasp/Would counties unite as the men at Vinegar Hill
(Bitter the memory of those chronicles still)/Allied against the doings of Ironside and King Bill?/Would the Hunger and the Rising not have hit home/(Many were lain beneath rock and stone)/If the valiant Earls had not met their death in Rome?

Sparking the Flame

Barely an acorn of innocence remains from childhood/The slit-eyed cynic's stance does not make me feel so good/Sweet nothings are far too old-fashioned to utter/The scarlet organ on my sleeve trampled in the gutter/O my heart, oh thou art so cold/The kaleidoscopic things I can't tell that were done and said/The years of writing them up are too immoderate to be read/The well of my depths is too deep for your reception/Don't let go of our euphorically fragile connection/O my head, two in the bed no more/Knotted together through a few dark and silent hours/A parallel existence germinates its roots and its flowers/But soon this new world bids a fond farewell/And we are summoned back by the clanging of the bell/O my hand, its love line's span cut down/And when two worlds collide and separate/We will turn away and we will contemplate/It was not for long/It is not for long/It shall not be for long

The Wooden Coat

You are trapped in a fading being/Nothing works quite like before/Help the aged whose eyes aren't seeing
Close to going but no cigar (I'm at the door)/Lay me down in troubled slumber/To not awaken encumbered/Cut me adrift you beg everyone/I want to don the wooden coat/I have made no pact with the Evil One/Immortality sticks in my throat/I am ready to walk the wire/Feel the shining of my desire/Follow me down to the old oak (follow, follow)/Will you follow me down there (follow, follow)?/That is where you'll find the old folk/In answer to your fervent prayer (follow, follow)/And you will see what I mean/When you kneel at the gnarled tree

Dated but Still Lovely

Charity shops and the need to be thrifty/Flea markets beckon again now I'm fifty/Belles with bottoms spreading their flares/Festival stalls calling out their wares/What goes around comes around once more
Then goes away again like fine folklore/That tall tree is a thousand books tomorrow/Bought and sold, loaned and borrowed/Deli meals and road rage/Kitsch and kin/Come and go come and go like everything/Dying young and hippy/Living in sin/It all goes round and round again/It all goes round and round again/Dated so dated but still lovely/Told her mother she was misunderstood/The music I like you don't think any good/Now she's in a house and garage full of soul/She's a retro girl with a head full of goals/Jack The Ripper holds in his murderous hand/Quartered clockwork oranges for the damned/But wise Madiba tries to lead us to a better way/Be it thistles and thorns or rosebuds in May/Peace and love and wicked wars/Makes us want to settle scores/Turn your cheek from the burning flame/To the still of a lake or a kitten's soft paw

To the Brow of the Hill (and Back)

I do not remember the clock's location too well/When we lay beneath newspapers to sleep for the night/And though enviously young it was still a living hell/As the cold crept over all my bones until the morning light/So I left the three day working week far, far behind me/And we made a big dog kennel for our little patchy cat/My mother's image shrank away as the ship it sailed free/I'd seen statues with their faces pale and /stony like that/Stone it cannot move/Not like I was moved/And I was truly one of them/Like granite when on the deck I sat/Just two weeks on the ocean on the cheapest fare assisted/The clamouring seagulls they did dine on the rarest roast of beef/The sparkling night sky views could not ever be resisted/And a woman crushing sugar lumps we watched in disbelief/To the land of the Dutch and Dingaan from Dublin and from London/Caused lively consternation in the circle where I was known/And as new ground obscured my roots I felt I was undone/But when the springbok leaped up something new had also grown/The little bok he springs/My heart rose up with him/And I was truly one of them/No longer was I alone/In time to come the culture shock had all but disappeared/But it stabbed me sharply in the breast when injustice shook me awake/Eleven years experience passed both wonderful and weird/And Joburg claimed a slice of my soul and a bond not to break/In the townships and the towns the writing marched along the wall/In an angry overdue parade whose progress could not be ignored/So I stepped away from troubled times to answer Europe's call/But to this day I fiercely guard memories safely stored/Then I was drawn/To the place where I am from/And I am truly one of us/Back to where I was born

Hangover from Hell

Someone posts a fish in the mailbox/Along comes a recruit with work ethic intact/He held his nose and fished it out/Cursed his colleagues for all they lacked/It seems like every young one has a baby
For there's not a lot else to aspire to/Got to get away from hearth and home/'Cause there's not much there to live up to/Poor girl waiting four years for somewhere to live/Clutching straws and infant's limbs/She's closed her books and shut the doors/No chance of exchanging wedding rings/Hand on the bible and hand on heart/We can cross ourselves and hope to die/Even though our sin can be heinous/We swear we didn't do it and swear we didn't lie/Get me to the chapel get me to the temple get me to the shrine/Anywhere away from disappointment down the line/Give me holy water to douse this hangover from hell/I drank too much of everything in my quest to live life well/I see them all around me see it everywhere/Girls in first bud and boys in full bloom/Got so much going but they're going too far/They went too quickly they came too soon/Death-defying substances doled out at the door/Where the preacher used to reign supreme/Some city spots have gone to the dogs/But others are still every tourist's dream/Get me to the chapel get me to the temple get me to the shrine/Get on the good roads and even if we must/Sometimes live too fast in the slow lane/And though big issues call to us/Perfect intentions are tough to maintain/Get me to the chapel get me to the temple get me to the shrine /

Mother of Pearl (and Invention)

Oh where are you now my beautiful mother mine?/In our bleached desert we await a cool green oasis/In our parched garden the rose will wither and die/Is that your perfect silhouette in the doorway?/Will you brush your powdered cheek against mine?/Oh where are you now my beautiful mother mine?/I recall the swish of heavy velvet and thick satins/You came for a while bringing chocolate and puzzles/The plants that you knew in English and also in Latin/Can you answer my letter to your box number/Or close the shutters when the night wind is rattling?/Oh where are you now my beautiful mother mine?/Won't you come along soon mother of pearl and invention/To take us to the fair in the playground of our dream?/I cannot soothe your brow my lost and lonely children/I am bound by brutal circumstance and cruel extreme/I relinquish my little ones les pauvres choux de mon coeur/I could not prevent the twists and turns of my fate/I hold their hands in my reverie but the rest is a blur/Their faces are faint through the glaze of my pane/They'll forget me when many times clocks whiz and whirr/Oh where are you now my beautiful mother mine?/Won't you come along soon mother of pearl and invention/To take us to the fair in the playground of our dream?/I cannot soothe your brow my lost and lonely children/I am bound by brutal circumstance and cruel extreme/Won't you come along soon mother of pearl and invention/To paper over all your absence before it takes its toll?/I cannot fold you in my arms today or tomorrow/But I will bear you in my heart forever fused in my soul

In the Web

When first I stood against you/I had to stand my ground/If I'd shown a tender weakness/You would have struck me down/A line was carved upon the floor/Beyond which I could not tread/And if I dared to look askance/You'd file me with the dead/Never raise me from the dead/Stormy days and dreamy nights/Brought you boiling to the brink/Your glistening web of slow deceit/Forged strong and fallow links/I do not want to play your game/The stakes are steep and high/Come one day I will write you off/You all know the reason why/Know the reason why/There's no more fury there is only scorn/Count myself lucky I could walk away
Won't help this world that you were born/Won't let you cripple me today/What does your conscience have to say?/I am choking in this stuffy room/I need some fresher air/fog descends with every day/This treatment's most unfair/You drowned me in a river/Tied a wreath around my neck/You hoped that I would float away
But you're the washed-up wreck/Washed up like a wreck/There's no more fury there is only scorn/Count myself lucky I could walk away/Won't help this world that you were born/Won't let you cripple me today/What does your conscience have to say?/And now I'm far removed from you/The web it weaves no more/I am out of this equation/You have shown yourself the door

Brave Face

If the postman comes knocking at my door/Put on a quick lick of paint/Can't open up without putting on a face/But he seems pleased I've gone to the trouble/Flushed with rouge but I feel pale and faint/Smear of lipstick but no colour at the core/And I do that for everyone/Brave face for everyone/And I do that for everyone/I've a brave face for everyone/I was like a hedgehog at that point in time/But I've been a /Christmas tree angel/Prickly as pins and pine tree needles/I've an avalanche of news too bleak to report
So I'll probably lie low and not tell/All the bad stuff and just say I feel fine/I should talk to someone/But I can't really tell anyone/I should talk to someone/Somebody somebody anyone/I want to sink without trace for a while/Off the road full of dizzying bends/Become a recluse for a few precious weeks/Bury my head in cooling sand/I long to have reached the bitter end/Of many tomorrows that pass without a smile/I feel like I've turned into no one/Nobody nobody no one/I feel like I've turned into no one/Nobody nobody no one/But my life will be so different in ten years' time/My heart could be soft as a fruit inside/But still hard to the touch/I thank my good friends for expecting so much/And these dark days have come to pass/And I can save face for everyone/Open the door up for everyone/Put on a brave face as bold as brass/

Seals in the Sound

My soul rises up with the morning/It rests in the depths of the night/And in between it embraces the pleasures/Sometimes twisted with woe beyond measure/And it swirls through Deilginis in the trail of a kite/I walked with my togs along Vico/I stood on the stones at White Rock/And I waded in cold murky shallows/Felt seaweed fronds flutter in the eddies and flows/And homewards I bounded without shoes or socks/Dip doo da doo dip doo da doo di dee di da da dum/Dip doo da doo dip doo da doo di dee di da da dum/I learned doggy paddle in the harbour/By the bright coloured boats tethered there/I rowed round the /island with the redheaded Mac/Nursing my blisters all the way back/And I pocketed apples and daffodils just for a dare/But it's farewell to my familiars/I must now sail across the Irish Sea/And it's many long years I'll not be there/For trying to make some fortune/And when I return to that place so rare/I will see from many thousand feet/That speck of Dalkey Island/And its monuments from the air/I hid in the gorse in Sorrento Park/I was too late home for my tea/I climbed to the mosaic of Dowland/I skated my way round the bandstand/And I thought that this was the best life for me/I went up and down the Cat's Ladder/I knew every woman and man/I cycled the streets like a gale force wind/Battled the boys for some venial sins/And I kissed one or two of them on Mrs Lavery's land/But it's farewell to my familiars/I must now sail across the Irish Sea/And it's many long years I'll not much care/For trying to find some fortune/But when I return to that place so rare/I might see from many thousand feet/That speck of Dalkey Island/And seals in The Sound playing there

Armistice Day

Look up at the old man on the screen/His one good eye still twinkling/Rousing his voice for a verse or two
He becomes again what he has been/A brave little song full of fighting talk/Once rang across the trenches
On a cold day in hell at the Flanders fields/Eighty years ago/It's a miracle that he's not dead/He's a hundred and two/On this Armistice Day/A story to be told for when he's gone/There'll be no one left to tell/How the poppies got so red/High time he had an audience keen to hear/All of his recall/I stare at the shapes coming from his mouth/Bold images of fear/A defiant smile and a jaunty nod/Survived the futile conflict/Friend and enemy sank in the mud/The bones of the fallen turn in the sod/Eighty years on/It's a miracle that he's not dead /I recline on a bed of red rose petals/Safe from his tale of slaughter/Weapons scattered to the sky
Shards of gun grey metal/I dine off fine china plates/He's scalded by a tin can mug/Split seconds then transmitted now/Tell how he deals with his fate/On the Flanders fields/It's a miracle that he's not dead 

The Talk of the Arcade

They shouldn't have lived together but they couldn't live apart/Divided by the head and ruled by too much heart/They often used to dance on the edge of borderline/Smooching in the silence still juggling all the time
All the time, all the time/Both could strike with passion in the kitchen or the hall/Dodging the delivery and bouncing back with the ball/Well it was pretty public when the door was kicked in/And we heard those bitter words that said they'd given in/Given in, they'd given in/She ran a classy shop from a downtown arcade/He biked in from time to time to pass the time and light of day/Sometimes they were loving and sometimes they /were cruel/But often they would raise the roof with a mighty loss of cool/Almighty loss of cool/By the end of it all she was coiled up like a spring/Bird of bright plumage had to mend its broken wing/At first he stayed at home and turned the volume down/Then he put on his helmet went out spinning on the town/On the town, on the town/They didn't care if they were the talk of the arcade/Going on and going off like old albums overplayed/The more they tried to shout it out or keep an icy cool/The more they knew they'd fallen in a shark-infested pool/A shark-infested pool/Do they reminisce about those days sometimes?/It's safer not to scratch beneath the surface of one's life/There's possibly an earthquake and a raging tidal storm/Waiting to devour us when we think we've been reformed/It's all very well with hindsight to saunter with the smug/But i knew that disaster and in particular that drug/It's always such a pity and a belated crying shame/When the door is locked and barred with such permanent blame/They didn't care if they were the talk /of the arcade/Going on and going off like old albums overplayed/The more they tried to shout it out or keep an icy cool/The more they knew they'd fallen in a shark-infested pool/A shark-infested pool

The Blackcap 

I passed over browning lands/To the sound of flapping wings/I saw ten miles ahead of me/A storm upon the sands/And I saw three horsemen travelling on/All dressed in bright clothing/The dust thrown up beneath their heels/Was seaward blowing/When I few over the darkened shore/I heard the gulls lamenting/And I knew that they would not follow me/As northwards on I soar/And I glimpsed an island far below/It was standing vast and empty/I thought to stand upon those rocks/That they might harbour me/Before I see my colony/The clouds should all have parted/And presently the sky is clear/The waters calm for me/And many will join me where/The days are long and quiet/And I know that we may meet again/Before the sun has set (3rd Ear Music)

Blackberry Bush

The winter season harsh and cold upon the sycamore tree/That stands against the silent hills quietly /growing old/Where men crossed swords in sympathy with those who might be free/At night I'll go to the monument to see who can be there/Sometimes a soldier is waiting for some greeting to be sent/Another girl to touch the stone and twist a lock of hair/She stood three hours so afraid till the sky grew dark ahead/She thought she heard the battle sound, the tune the piper played/The wind sighed on and the rain blew down, tears for those who led/But no one spoke and no one came enquiring of a love/Just the image of a drummer boy reminding us again/And the rain still beating from the sky among the shivering flowers/Every evening endlessly by the blackberry bush/Even when the moon is small by the blackberry bush/Until the earth is almost gone by the blackberry bush (3rd Ear Music 1978)

Episodes

Woman dusted powder/From jars of vanity/Turned to face her mountain/Loved its sanity/Talked with people on the road/The smoke of every flame/Caught a country morning/Loved the straightfoot plain/Woman downed a glass of port/Cheer of berries bright/Knew she lived a million years/Loved the sea at night/Bending in her boldness/To scoop the blackleaf tree/Her gesture and he listened wisely/Loved his majesty (3rd Ear Music 1978)

Heaven Heath

Bring snowy lady with the laughing/Spread your sailing angels over me/Tell a tale of old sinfuls/Look for you to change their face/Do not cry for all your leaden tears/Graced a lorded man whose gift was all too free/He came to fall upon a faithless smile/Leaning eyes towards the clay/And on my stone there where the flowers lie/Sleep the growing years of my dusty day/Gone the time of a heathen child/To the godly grounds to play/Weep the women on a watery leaf/Caught in browning robe all on my silent breath/I come to rise upon the Heaven Heath/With a timeless child to pray/Forget the garden of my graceless youth/Glimpse the wilting rose in my faded eye/Slip the shade from my shoulders/For a cobwebbed lake to catch/Bleed your soul for my silvered fate/Take the ageing cross to bury days gone by/Receive my own into your Heaven Heath/Towards my waiting bed to lie (Warner Chappell Music)

Sheep Season

Winding up a hillside where the shepherds roam/Counting their flocks in the gloaming/Shining the sea
Winking its light to the froth and the foam/Chilling the air with his shady tread/On came the wolf with surprise
Filling his eyes/With soft silent creatures soon to be dead/Hurry the shepherd man wizened and olden/Go and wave your staff at him/He has come to bury you for claiming his fold/Stillness came into the misty meadows/Down from the banks to the woodland/Clouds gather in skies/Giving their rains into mountains to flow (Warner Chappell Music)

Messenger Birds

She sat thinking under a black sky/With a white child, a white child on her knee/Leaning to the dim, grim, grey sea/Into a silent sleep/He lay wondering under the same coal sky/What the white child and she had gone to see/It was the clouded and cold night, bright sea/A woman kneel where her child used to be/Along the wind will bring them secret tears/Wash away their smiles in a rain across the sand/Seagulls take to a land where they'll not hear of his cries/Nor see the fallen tears of the white child's eyes (Warner Chappell Music)

All songs PRS for Music except where otherwise mentioned