Placelore

Full Steam

(Received from a friend)

David Gray said of this track in publicity materials: "It's a song with quite dark sentiments. I see it as a broad political thing, I think of the line from TS Eliot, 'a patient etherised upon a table', that's the state we're in as a collective mass. We're just sedated, talking s--t. We're so disconnected from the guts of life most of the time."

David Grays single ‘Full Steam’, a duet with Annie Lennox.  All proceeds from the sale of this single will go to Children In Need.

Here you can watch the official video for the song.

David Gray - Full Steam Lyrics featuring Annie Lennox

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEUjWO4KV4s

All our lives we’ve dreamed about it
Just to find that it was never real
This sure ain’t no great Valhalla
Coming closer each turn of the wheel
Forlorn, adrift on seas of beige
In this our Golden Age

Even in our darkest hour
Never thought that it could get so bad
Bullied, suckered, pimped and patronised
Every day your tawdry little lives
So loose your head
And step within
The silence deafening

Now you saw it coming
And I saw it coming
We all saw it coming
But we still bought it
Now you saw it coming
And I saw it coming but still
Running full steam ahead

In and out of consciousness
It breaks my heart to see you like this
Crying, wringing hands and cursing fate
Always so little far too late
It’s 3am I’m wide awake
There’s still one call to make

Now you saw it coming
And I saw it coming
We all saw it coming
But we still bought it
Now you saw it coming
And I saw it coming
We all saw it coming
But we still bought it

Now you saw it coming
And I saw it coming
But still running full steam
Now you saw it coming
And I saw it coming but still
Running full steam
Now you
And I
We all saw it coming
But we still bought it
Now you
And I
We all saw it coming
But we still bought it

 

Our interest's on the dangerous edge of things

 

Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop

I met the Bishop on the road

And much said he and I.

'Those breasts are flat and fallen now,

Those veins must soon be dry;

Live in a heavenly mansion,

Not in some foul sty.'

 

'Fair and foul are near of kin,

And fair needs foul,' I cried.

'My friends are gone, but that's a truth

Nor grave nor bed denied,

Learned in bodily lowliness

And in the heart's pride.

 

'A woman can be proud and stiff

When on love intent;

But Love has pitched his mansion in

The place of excrement;

For nothing can be sole or whole

That has not been rent.'

 

W. B. Yeats 

 

Our interest's on the dangerous edge of things.

 

...Are men still, catch a wheel within a wheel,

See more in a truth than the truth's simple self,

Confuse themselves. You see lads walk the street

Sixty the minute; what's to note in that?

You see one lad o'erstride a chimney-stack;

Him you must watch—he's sure to fall, yet stands!

Our interest's on the dangerous edge of things.

The honest thief, the tender murderer,

The superstitious atheist, demireps

That loves and saves her soul in new French books—

We watch while these in equilibrium keep

The giddy line midway: one step aside,

They're classed and done with. I, then, keep the line

Before your sages,—just the men to shrink

From the gross weights, coarse scales and labels broad

You offer their refinement..

 

Robert Browning 

 

 

Selections from Last Poems

 IX

The chestnut casts his flambeaux, and the flowers

Stream from the hawthorn on the wind away,

The doors clap to, the pane is blind with showers.

Pass me the can, lad; there's an end of May.

 

There's one spoilt spring to scant our mortal lot,

One season ruined of your little store.

May will be fine next year as like as not:

But ay, but then we shall be twenty-four.

 

We for a certainty are not the first

Have sat in taverns while the tempest hurled

Their hopeful plans to emptiness, and cursed

Whatever brute and blackguard made the world.

 

It is in truth iniquity on high

To cheat our sentenced souls of aught they crave,

And mar the merriment as you and I

Fare on our long fool's-errand to the grave.

 

Iniquity it is; but pass the can.

My lad, no pair of kings our mothers bore;

Our only portion is the estate of man:

We want the moon, but we shall get no more.

 

If here to-day the cloud of thunder lours

To-morrow it will hie on far behests;

The flesh will grieve on other bones than ours

Soon, and the soul will mourn in other breasts.

 

The troubles of our proud and angry dust

Are from eternity, and shall not fail.

Bear them we can, and if we can we must.

Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.

 

A.E. Housman

 

 

 

It May Be Better

The night hangs dark lilac and white, deep snow for the bears sleep, moon stars and the wind so cold, moaning from the Siberian forests. Quiet now the old wooden house and I read by lamplight  from a book of Russian poets.[1]

 

It may be that a better way

to conquer time and world

is to pass and not to leave a trace—

to pass, and not to leave a shadow

 

on the walls... To be, ...

 

It may be that the better art

is with the hand of Bach

to leave the organ undisturbed—

to vanish, not to leave a cinder

 

for the urn ... To be, but by deceit:

to strike yourself from latitudes.

to slip through time as through the sea

and not to break the waves.

 

Marina Tsvetaeva May 14, 1923

---

[1] The Stray Dog Cabaret finely translated by Paul Schmidt a man attuned to Russian language and culture. New York Review Books 2007, P.96.

 

Poem from a friend

A spot of half moonlight

Has shone into my room

Like  visiting little folk;

Leaving an echo, evidence of her presence

 

(Tonight's poem thought you might like it)

 _______________________________________

Reply

Instantly, I felt its feminine beauty and saw you far away in the magic of your sensitivity. Camped alone in the wintered snowy mountains, I sensed a spirit pass through my shadow and the watcher within the silence of trees. 

_______________

 

Whispering stars float in the river-ing stream of my ancestral blood

Old soul returning to an earthly child's body 

knowing the unknown

Yearning then

to listen 

to the language of Compassion,

of Love,

and to speak with playful elders 

but there were none,

and none who understood 

understood.

 

 

Essential Oils

Essential Oils—are wrung—

The Attar from the Rose

Be not expressed by Suns—alone—

It is the gift of Screws—

 

The General Rose—decay—

But this—in Lady's Drawer

Make Summer—When the Lady lie

In Ceaseless Rosemary—

 

Emily Dickinson 

 

The Secret Sits

We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.

Robert Frost 1942

"Here Am I"

The man whose calling "O Allah" was equivalent to God's answering him, "Here Am I"

That person one night was calling "O Allah!"

That his mouth might be sweetened thereby,

and Satan said to him, "Be quiet, O austere one!

No answer comes to thee from nigh the throne,

How long wilt thou cry "Allah" with harsh face?"

That person was sad at heart and hung his head,

And then beheld Khizr present before him in a vision,

Who said to him, "Ah!  Thou has ceased to call on God,

Wherefore repentest thou of calling upon Him?"

The man said, "The answer 'Here am I' came not,

Wherefore I fear that I am repulsed from the door."

Khizr replied to him, "God has given me this command;

Go to him and say, 'O much-tried one,

Did not I engage thee to do my service?

Did not I engage thee to call upon me?

That calling 'Allah' of thine was my 'Here am I,'

And that pain and longing and ardour of thine my messenger;

Thy struggles and strivings for assistance

Were my attractions, and originated thy prayer.

Thy fear and thy love are the covert of my mercy,

Each 'O Lord!' of thine contains many 'Here am I's.

 

The soul of fools is alien from this calling on God,

Because it is not their wont to cry, 'O Lord!'

On their mouths and hearts are locks and bonds,

That they may not cry to God in time of distress.

God gave Pharaoh abundance of riches and wealth,

So that he boasted that he was 'Lord Supreme.'

In the whole of his life he suffered no headache,

So that he never cried to God, wretch that he was.

God granted him the absolute dominion of the world,

But withheld from him pain and sorrow and cares;

Because pain and sorrow and loads of cares

Are the lot of God's friends in the world.

Pain is better than the dominion of the world,

So that thou mayest call on God in secret.

The cries of those free from pain are dull and cold,

The cries of the sorrowful come from the burning hearts."

 

(Jalaluddin Rumi 1207 - 1273)

tr. E. H. Whinfield

 

The Buried Life

But often, in the world's most crowded streets,

But often, in the din of strife,

There rises an unspeakable desire

After the knowledge of our buried life;

A thirst to spend our fire and restless force

In tracking out our true, original course;                       

A longing to inquire

Into the mystery of this heart which beats

So wild, so deep in us--to know

Whence our lives come and where they go.

And many a man in his own breast then delves,

But deep enough, alas! none ever mines.

And we have been on many thousand lines,

And we have shown, on each, spirit and power;

But hardly have we, for one little hour,

Been on our own line, have we been ourselves            

Hardly had skill to utter one of all

The nameless feelings that course through our breast,

But they course on for ever unexpress'd.

And long we try in vain to speak and act

Our hidden self, and what we say and do

Is eloquent, is well--but 'tis not true!

 

Mattthew Arnold The Buried Life