1. |
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We never saved much for posterity
We had no cause
We had the rest of our long lives.
I never took any photographs of you
I was too busy looking at your sweet warm eyes.
I never wrote you a love song
Though I wanted to–
I comfort myself with the thought that you knew:
I would have loved you forever if your life had carried on
And I will love you forever
Although you are irrevocably gone.
This is the song I never wrote, although I always meant to.
But I was busy holding your hand and kissing your nice lips
And I guess we both knew it was a love song that we lived.
I loved the names you called me,
I loved your clever eyes
I loved your body even though it sometimes made you shy.
I would have loved you forever if your life had carried on
And I will love you forever
Although you are irrevocably gone.
This is the song I never wrote for you.
This is the song I never wrote for you.
This is the song I never wrote, although I always meant to.
The future was ours, and so we staked so many claims
The places we would travel to
The children, the names
Of the friends who we were still to meet,
All the evenings, the jokes
But now, as it turns out, we have been robbed of all our hopes.
This is the song I never wrote for you.
This is the song I never wrote for you.
This is the song I never wrote, although I always meant to.
I would have loved you forever if your life had carried on
And I will love you forever
Although you are irrevocably gone.
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2. |
Lux Perpetua
03:19
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Lux Perpetua Luceat Ei
And the sun is yours
That warms my face and feet.
Lux perpetua—although the nights come in
Like grandmother's footsteps behind.
Lux Perpetua
And the rain will come down drab
And I will bandy blues
Forgotten things in pockets and
Puddles in my shoes
Winter will step on our heels
And bare knuckled knock at the door
And I will cry hotly and hopeless again
Tears of your nevermore.
Lux Perpetua Luceat Ei
And the sun is yours
That warms my face and feet.
Lux perpetua—although the nights come in
Like blackout blinds.
Lux Perpetua.
But blackbirds and their brown wives
Have rustled in the leaves
The white-nosed coots on rivers
And the swallows in the eaves
I have been deaf-blind so long
While hedgerows brimmed and then
Not ever will I touch you more
But I'd say I have eyes again.
Lux Perpetua Luceat Ei Ah ah ah
And because you were you can't be
Taken away.
Lux perpetua luceat ei.
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3. |
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I am Juliet
Who did not die
But awoke to a world,
Weightier and worse
Who wandered the nightscape alone
To follow the hearse;
Who walked to the alter
Red with sorrow
Soaking from rain
Outside the blowing gale,
And I am Orpheus
And long have I sung
In the underworld
To no avail.
But I have been privy to something true,
Something old, something new,
Something borrowed, something blue.
Julia and I were out in the evening
With lipstick on and
She wrote me a letter
And this is her song
With Saskia, we supped on dumplings,
Gleaned the star shined streets
Of pennies for our thoughts
And feasts of Chinese sweets
And we belonged to bright time
A-stepped out from the cold
And shy against the sky-line
All feather-wrought, yolk gold
And nothing can get better
But I am stumbling through
Something old, something new
Something borrowed, something blue.
You, my love, were up with the gulls
While I lay, somnolence and curls
While I lay breathing dreaming breaths
You took the outside's icy kiss
And now you sleep forever
And I in bright unrest
Will try to be your eyes, my love
And only see the best
And all the splendid times that will probably ensue,
Something old, something new
Something borrowed, something blue.
Something old, something new
Something borrowed, something blue.
And I am not alone now
For this is the whole world's tune
And many things are touched and told
Beneath the visiting moon
And the ever endless erstwhile
And beyond, the copious slew,
Something old, something new
Something borrowed, something blue.
Something borrowed, something blue.
Something old, something new
Something borrowed, something blue.
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4. |
Timelessness
04:15
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I came from timelessness and you went to it.
I was born between annals and mists
In the house of the she-ghosts and the
Wind blown warm from the aged-stone chimney.
I was a savage tamed, ballet footed and blundering,
Out of the root system I came, like a beanstalk,
Into the ballroom, where we began to spin
Into a new world dance with steps as old as night.
I was rudimentary, subsisting off sunsets
You were suited and soft palmed and bellied with meats.
Or so it seemed.
I was mistaken.
We taught each other grace.
We breathed fire and forests
Milk and soft somethings.
We didn't quite agree about God.
Now is the murk time,
Now is the dust time.
Now is the forgotten sister of despair.
Now is the freewheel of skin-sores
And pale eyes and red heartedness.
Now there are green grown bulbs and foraging air farers
Lip-synchers of sunken syllables.
Now there are window-down cruising cars
And men who loiter and leer,
Blind to your having been.
I came from timelessness, and you left for it,
High up in the no-man's place in the white snow,
I came from timelessness, and you left for it,
In the meet of the ice and fire
When the mountain fell down.
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5. |
Impertinent Pigeons
03:13
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The world is impertinent pigeons
And the time-share of sunlight and lamps
And the city is spruced and the city is spinning
To shake off the days of the damp.
The world is bicycle streets
And the clang-bang and clattered repair
As the city is shined and the city is oiled
To turn in the nonchalant air. Da-a da...
And I have been so inconsolable
So muted, bewildered in black
And though I have chalked the streets with your was-ness
There never is any way back
The world is without you my love
And although I have tacked and jibed
I have seen always your absence in front
And always your absence behind.
The world is impertinent pigeons
And the time-share of sunlight and lamps
And the city is spruced and the city is spinning
To shake off the days of the damp.
The world is sky-skittish sparrows
And everywhere light is sown
And the toothy mouthed houses are grinning and gleaming
And I am all alone.
The world is impertinent pigeons
And the time-share of sunlight and lamps
And the city is spruced and the city is spinning
To shake off the days of the damp.
The world is without you my love
And although I have tacked and jibed
I have seen always your absence in front
And always your absence behind.
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6. |
Russian Dolls
03:31
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Those days we had as winter came
Each day was more enclosed in night:
Than that before, like Russian dolls,
When we would walk, out in the streets,
The tock, tock, tock of our feet
And we replete, and we alight.
And we would drink wine, kitchen dance,
Your deft hands turning fish in pans
Your kind hands, our soft caresses,
A myriad exultant kisses.
The sky was moon-ripe, luminary
Sempiternal, promisary.
These days winter walks its paces
Damply in the leaf-left spaces
Nuts and seeds, our bird oblations
My grandmother's incantations,
And I make soup and bake bread
And feel the night slip overhead.
And love of mine, I see you still
I wish you saw the ocean swell
Of crows flown out to herald night,
I wish you heard the feather beat,
Euphoric squawk: a skein of geese
Come quick and sleek over the house.
And love of mine, you never meant
To leave me like this, so despondent
And love of mine, I must go out
Go out by clear-called owl invite
Out of the tomb-black dark of my room
Into the moon-slack night.
Those days we had as winter came
Each day was more enclosed in night:
Than that before, like Russian dolls,
When we would walk, out in the streets,
The tock, tock, tock of our feet
The tock, tock, tock of our feet
The tock, tock, tock of our feet
And we replete, and we alight.
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7. |
The Glassy Mountain
04:17
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You can ask the prophet
He'll tell you all he knows
And you can ask the skipper
The way the trade wind blows
And you can ask the soothsayer,
The bookie's tipping sides
But sometimes,
A glassy mountain decides
You can follow the magi
To the east, a burning star
Where a gypsy reads your tea leaves
And tells you the way things are
Oh you can drink the shaman's cup
And see what dreams will say
But sometimes a glassy mountain
Will tear it all away.
What you ask of the mountain
Was never yours to say
A mountain can cast you forever in stone
A mountain can turn you to clay
And you were mine my love
As I was yours, and still
A mountain will do as it does my love
A mountain will do as it will.
In the icy dark of winter night
You knock at the blackmith's shop
And the blacksmith takes you in
For he knows there is no other way up
And there you learn in solder and fire
To forge your iron shoes
And up the unspeakable face you climb
No other way to chose.
The gambler has gone cold turkey here
The skipper is far from the seas
The magi are cursing the star here
And winds do as they please
The shaman's cup is empty now
The prophet has lost his faith
And I came here to prove my love
Though you are sleeping beneath.
What you take from the mountain
Was never yours to know
A mountain can cast you forever in stone
A mountain can fold you in snow
And you were mine my love
As I was yours, and yet
A mountain will do as it does my love
Without regret.
You can ask the prophet
He'll tell you all he knows
And you can ask the skipper
The way the trade wind blows
And you can ask the soothsayer,
The bookie's tipping sides
But sometimes,
A glassy mountain decides.
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8. |
Kent, Connecticut
05:21
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I might have come here with you in May time instead
We might have kissed beneath those reeds that are taller than our heads
We might perhaps have gaped at green and blossom snow white
We would have walked the woods in daytime and kept each other warm at night
Da-a da...
But there is no space now for speculation and dreaming
The winter snows have taken you, you never saw the spring
Now I come here in January to see this place you loved
To midwinter snow-bloom and branches bare above.
Da-a da...
Now I come with crowds to bring a poem for your deaf ears
While snow muffles footsteps and freezes all our tears
Now we come to watch your coffin lowered to the ground
While the snow and sun obliviously both go down.
Da-a da...
The river is frozen now but time continues on
And takes us further from the moment you suddenly were gone
And out of possibility of other worlds of chance
Turns chance to truth to sorrow in silent, blind advance.
I could shout to the woods now, calling your name
But I know that the answer is always the same.
I have asked of the woods and the woods have replied
“You know well that the answer you seek is inside”
A still wind is blowing the words ‘he is dead’
And I am a widow before I was wed.
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9. |
Crocuses
03:36
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I was beckoned out one night
By the wind-chill rising dark
And the leaf-tide flotsam passing by
As I passed the shuffling park.
I went out to find you
And the flock of leaves in the air
And my breath-tide rolling in and out
But crocuses grew in the, crocuses grew in the square.
I went out to meet you
And you under lamplight leak
And you standing hatted and gentle there
And I forgot how to, I forgot how to speak.
You said ‘take your time’ so kindly
I stumbled to confess
And you grasped my hand in yours and then
Our sudden code-breaker, sudden code-breaker kiss.
Then we went out in the cool together
And all of the world was ours
And high on the night’s dark shoulder there
A billion startled, billion startled stars.
Now I walk out in the blankest dark
Out on the night’s black brow
And I can see you clearer there
But you are nowhere, you are nowhere now.
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10. |
Home Again
04:27
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I am home again and the outside
With tongue-wet leafy limes
It arches its eyebrow
And gestures “About time”
About time it is, you know for
The reflective world of rain
And the roundly-uddered welcoming
Of night-blot's soft refrain.
I am home again and the inside
All flush-walled and beam
Clears its floor-creak throat
And it sighs in kettle-steam.
About time it is no doubt for
Hedges, beaded in rosehip
Time for the greenly grassflush
And the snaking of raindrip.
I am home again and the garden
With cross path arms, it tuts.
And checks again the sundial.
“About time”, “no buts”.
About time for earthworms and
Shuffling crowsfeet
Upon the moss upon the conker tree
And lichen on the beech.
About time for crowsteps
And slates beneath the soak
On top of the singingly
Lingering house, old as oak.
Now I sit where you once sat
In anytime-old air
Soon I will go to London
And I will sing for you there.
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Sophie Ramsay UK
Sophie Ramsay sings old and new folk: songs from her native Scotland alongside originals with poetic lyrics. ‘The Glassy Mountain' (2013): ‘undeniably beautiful’ (fRoots), 'Joanna Newsom meets Belle and Sebastian' (R2). ‘The Seas Between Us’ (2016): 'Atmospheric, elegant and beguiling.' (Songlines). ‘Deeply moving’ (fRoots). Sophie tours regularly with cellist singer Sarah Smout. ... more
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