1. |
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Wake me, wake me
He come out on top, he beat
Hordes of heathen, he pluck
Swords of lightning from the
Stone and rippling
BC AD 6 and 6/9teenth Century
Justice might and mercy king of all chivalry.
Wake me, wake me
He Arth and Ursus, he yoke
Rome and Logres, he ride
Wings and horses, he steal
Grails from Annwn as a
Norman knight a bird of prey an earthed angel tree,
Celtic god a Dark Age white horse galloping free.
Woke King Arthur
In the 20th
Century.
Wake me, wake me
He ever present, he a
Church-hilled dragon, he the
King of Europe, never
Heard of England, he a
Druid henge a hollow hill a forest a sea
British May King ever changing eternity.
Woke King Arthur
In the 20th
Century.
(spoken) You who think you defend
This lost land of Logres
From drowning migrants
For your offshore profits
You're not Arthur's Britons
Follow your money
GO!
He fights invaders who claim
Lost Land acres from the
Drowning migrants, for their
Offshore profits, he’s the
Lose yourself to save yourself they don’t want to see
Release the Pax Britannia brand of Arthur-ity.
Woke King Arthur
In the Twenty first
Century.
Wake King Arthur
Yeah
Wake King King Arthur
Yeah
Wake King Arthur
YEAH!
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2. |
Ron?
01:20
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3. |
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|
Breck’s small eye revolving his treasure -
Little Britain and all it contains -
From Merlin he steals a vision
His tiny mind hardly sustains:
"Your castle, King Breck, keeps collapsing
Because built on the underground lair
Of two warring dragons, the red split
In the white's jaws of victory there.
"The red dragon stands for Britannia,
The white for the English-to-be
And your red worm is turning - and driving
The white dragon into the sea."
"But the red dragon's head is young Uther!"
Says King Breck, "And it ought to be mine!"
"My Breck's Isle exists on division,
I’m the crack in Great Britain's behind."
Merlin magically helmets young Uther,
Who cleaves to his dead captain's wife.
She believes he's her lost war-dead husband
In the hottest night of her life
And bears him a son, an Arth/Ursus,
A high noon in our deepest night sky,
The May-Winter King of a Lost Land
That Was Never, but Is, and Can't Die.
Let a nation divided/
In battle be joined,
Raven and Eagle
Conceiving the dove ||
As the Little is lost in the Greater Britain
Let Arth/Ursus cleave with heart unfailing
Till dividers learn with quailing
Hate is conquered by Love.
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4. |
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Far away and long ago
The land was divided and leaderless.
Barbarians invaded from north east and south.
A great king, a dragon head, was needed
To unite the people and drive out the invaders.
Such a king would prove himself
By drawing out from a weathered rock
A wondrous sword.
Many years passed and many men failed.
At last, a boy succeeded.
His name....was Arthur!...
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5. |
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|
.
'Blow, trumpet, for the world is white with May;
Blow trumpet, the long night hath rolled away!
Blow through the living world—"Let the King reign."
'Shall Rome or Heathen rule in Arthur's realm?
Flash brand and lance, fall battleaxe upon helm,
Fall battleaxe, and flash brand! Let the King reign.
'Strike for the King and live! his knights have heard
That God hath told the King a secret word.
Fall battleaxe, and flash brand! Let the King reign.
'Blow trumpet! he will lift us from the dust.
Blow trumpet! live the strength and die the lust!
Clang battleaxe, and clash brand! Let the King reign.
'Strike for the King and die! and if thou diest,
The King is King, and ever wills the highest.
Clang battleaxe, and clash brand! Let the King reign.
'Blow, for our Sun is mighty in his May!
Blow, for our Sun is mightier day by day!
Clang battleaxe, and clash brand! Let the King reign.
'The King will follow Christ, and we the King
In whom high God hath breathed a secret thing.
Fall battleaxe, and flash brand! Let the King reign.'
Tennyson from 'The Coming of Arthur'
What is greener than the grass?
Lay the bent to the bonny broom
What is smoother than a glass?
And you'll beguile the lady soon.
What is louder than a horn?
Lay the bent to the bonny broom
What is sharper than a thorn?
And you'll beguile the lady soon.
What is deeper than the sea?
Lay the bent to the bonny broom
What is longer than a Way?
And you'll beguile the lady soon.
Child Ballad 1 (Riddles Wisely Expounded)
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6. |
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7. |
The End of the World
03:21
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|||
|
At the end of the world,
Death-cries in long-axed waves on the wind,
The howling of sea-wolves
Breaking from thick throats like heart’s hope
At the end of the world,
The cry of a thousand farmboys dead. Surrendering ground for thundering hooves to sunder the Saxon
Space to die in
Or my name's not Arthur...
Our heels print the end of that world in a line
In the Westering turf that holds and holds
And gives back and holds and pens it
Lladd, for the lightning charge of the British
Driven against a last ditch in their own land
There like a squealing boar for slaughter.
Hard British lines in the soft wet earth
These pirate pig-English could not read
(Though pushed around later/
By strokes of non-combatant Latin/
And monks who couldn’t fight/).
Celtic hoof-prints that would not admit/
Corbenic deconsecrated/,
The Grail put to hard use in kitchens/,
Grail-maiden wastes fertilised/
In fierce field-brothels of endless yielding/,
Guinevere plucked as a concubine/,
Her white phantom beauty/
Laid like a ghost on a bloodsoaked bed/
And called by a c word that isn’t Cymru/,
Breeding an Angle country/
Where monk-curse is less than the air/
Saesneg is written on, the snorting ash/
Civitas burns to. Instead of which/,
Thanks to our play of thundering hooves/,
Thundering hooves in defence of these islands/,
The land remains Britain for fifty years/
And Logres forever!
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8. |
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9. |
The Summer Country
01:45
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10. |
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The recorded version omits verse 3.
Lord Arthur is gone, I laud my Beloved:
Cross on invincible shield, blood-red,
Dragon on young-summer green, red,
The terrible clatter of returning hooves.
I never quite believed. Always feared him
Dead. But he always came.
Arthur is gone, I laud my Beloved:
Swift white charger swooping like a spear
On the bonfire builders, the wolvers of women,
Scourging the rat run inroads of Europe,
Animal tracks of attacking Saxon,
His spur-tensed Britons beat back the Beast.
(Gone my Beloved, my Beloved I mourn:
Then Llugh fought battles within himself,
Cei fought his own rule, Bedwyr fought Llugh,
And some sought long for the holy caldron,
Sought it like a spoil of war,
And, gentle as light, my Beloved loved me.)
And Medraut gnawed through the golden years
Myrddin called a threshold to the dark,
And its beacon. Medraut, eyes on me
Like a dog’s on the moon, snapping his moment.
To Camlann the coastland, carried me off.
Gone my Beloved, my Beloved I mourn.
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11. |
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12. |
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"Throw back, throw back, Excalibur!"
I begged Bedwyr - and twice more -
"Throw back, grown black, Excalibur
That I might live forever
That Light might strike forever!
In wicked shifting thickets, the thorn
Of my heart's bursting must be:
Rose-clad, at home, and sleeping,
Or gone is the dazzling dream
That Artos, once man Arthur,
(Mis-mothered where life faltered
On long-fought malice Mordered)
Is God, is lord immortal:
A dream too real to live, thrown
Out of your world and hurled, look!
A Christ sword to Word your sky!"
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13. |
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Morgan le Fay
on her magical horse
black as the night
unconscious force
mourning the Du
beneath and beyond
all we think say and do
dying to be born
on a bridal (sic) away
part healing
in to the Whole,
the slumbering Soul
and the only Way
to catch the boar king
as he gallops away
Morgan le fay
Morgan le fay.
I love males, yet live makeless.
The long night and false dawn still lingers lonely
As day breaks my dike brook's bed
Diluting with grey light my Du-distilled soul.
I give birth, yet grave brothers
My mothering bosom of womb-mouthing earth
Is death-witch and dearth's country
Both vessel you're born on and vestige's barque.
Morgan le Fay
on her magical horse
black as the night
unconscious force
mourning the Du
beneath and beyond
all we think say and do
dying to be born
on a bridal (sic) away
part healing
in to the Whole,
the slumbering Soul
and the only Way
to catch the boar king
as he gallops away
Morgan le fay
Morgan le fay.
I bride men and breed Mordreds,
The world's consummation weds its confounding,
The lightning of love's moon lore
Will strike dead the armed man sick-nursed in these arms.
I brave blood, a bereaved bride,
God's mother and man's Eve, a death moth and Mary,
O Arthur ardent brother,
The love sword you bury here will seed the whole world.
Morgan le Fay
on her magical horse
black as the night
unconscious force
mourning the Du
beneath and beyond
all we think say and do
dying to be born
on a bridal (sic) away
part healing
in to the Whole,
the slumbering Soul
and the only Way
to catch the boar king
as he gallops away
Morgan le fay
Morgan le fay.
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14. |
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Wet hills of Wales wind and worrying westwards.
Autumn leaves, winter wastes
Slowly.
A stone ruin with star-bitten lintel stares steepling.
Within lies a schoolgirl
Skull snowed with daydream:
(Blow for the world is white with Maybe,)
Hoary hawthorn maiden-green weary,
Lush and verdant,
Broken and seedy and buried in blossom,
Shooting stars
Of August red,
Castles and old songs,
Passing fairs,
Late quests of things
That change and vanish,
May Queen satchel,
Summer skin,
Waiting for loving and life to begin.
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15. |
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16. |
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|
Belle ami, si est de nous, ne vous sans moi, ni moi sans vous.
Let them play at boyish games round
A table. Though walled up, bound,
In an unpublished garden, stone
Tower with window, all alone,
This court still revolves around me.
I twist them all round my pretty
Little finger, a studded ring:
The champion knight, the maimed king,
Geraint, Gawaine, my Lancelot.
It’s the only power I know.
He comes through enchanted forests,
Rough-horses, haunted castles, mists;
From slaying giants, big bad knights:
Barons with feudal appetites;
Impossible quests for Our Lady,
Sowing wild seeds Love meant for me;
Greets Arthur, “mon vieux!” – clash of mail
So grieved his crown still lacks a graal -
So tedious! He comes to me
Who waits… and do not wait to see
The object of his worship pass,
Wasted, into this looking glass,
Wheat-hair, rose-lips, unsown, should he
Choose to deny himself – and me.
© Gareth Calway 1991 first published in "Coming Home" King of Hearts Publishing
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17. |
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|
Blood on the corn
Like poppies, like sails,
Blood on the dawn
In the cornfield of Wales.
A land can’t exist
By elegy alone
But now even that ‘workshop’
Has been closed down.
“The Celts were invented
In 1700”
(It seems) when Scotland
By England was plundered.
Once Romans slaughtered
The druids of Mon;
Once Cymru’s death-foes
Carried it on,
Goddesses, heroes,
Fell from a trance
Into knights and ladies
Of French romance:
Essylte prayed
For a night-black sail;
Boudicca rode,
Gwenhwyfar failed,
And now Mr James’
“Atlantic Celts”
Have finally Westered
The Westering Welsh
Blood on the corn
Like poppies, like sails,
Blood on the dawn
In the cornfield of Wales.
It doubtless comforts
The butchered British
Of old to learn
That they never existed.
Myths are carved out
By the hunted killer
But history (it seems)
Is penned by the vicar
In the schoolman English
Of monastery Mon
And the schoolgirl French
That turned us on:
Of Britain’s reforging
In the semi-detached flames
Of ironic suburban
Mr James.
Blood on the corn
Like poppies, like sails,
Blood on the dawn
In the cornfield of Wales.
We should be singing
Our bardic song
In seas of corn,
Our voices strong,
Of Drustan’s truth,
Essylte’s love,
Of a black despair
In a sail of dove;
Of Britain’s remaking
By the King of May
From the broken sun
Of Boudicca’s day;
Of Britain’s Making -
The Arthurian sequel
To Britain’s Dreaming
And its visionary equal -
Being eagerly composed
While detained all day
By a Person on business
From a local LEA;
Of the red-crests’ defeat
By oak-druid seers,
Of King Arthur’s reign
For two thousand years…
But in Roma’s Mona,
In Angles’ sea,
In middle England
We’re history.
Blood on the corn
Like poppies, like sails,
Blood on the dawn
In the cornfield of Wales.
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18. |
The Lost Land
04:39
|
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|
Life was simpler then, a boy’s romance
Of Dunkirk, Badon and Crecy
A fifteenth century Commando mag,
A fifth century Victor comic:
The Alf Tupper interpretation of history.
Flying down the wing, I was Georgie Boy, the Best
A red shirt dragon making a green May
Of midfield, defence and keeper
Before cutting loose
An unstoppable angled drive,
Then holding aloft the Holy Grail…
Arthur’s battling Perfidious Albion
Come from behind
To knock out the favourites at Badon ’ill!
The flower of French chivalry
Shot down at Agincourt
By the British V sign…
Fairytale victories about as genuine
In any lasting political sense
When deconstructed now
By sober Oxford tomes,
Or unreported then
In Gildas’ Church Times
As an offside goal.
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19. |
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‘Come hither, Captain,’ the Grail Maiden sighs,
‘Thither away with me
To the rich wooded valley and holy well
My Waste Land dies to be.
‘Look! into the burning wilderness sun
Above the shadeless tree,
The high hawk of summer, hovering still,
The shadow of what will be:
‘The Shadowless One who waits above
To be born to you and me,
A Knight of Truth out of traitor arms
And infidelity.
‘Galahad the Pure, God-armed and winged
To bless our impurity
Unbearably born to steal your quest
And all of your shining glory.
‘Come hither, Captain,’ the Grail Maiden sighs,
And turns him a face so free:
His forbidden love, the queen of his dreams,
The end of all Chivalry.’
A faithless false knight in a failing light
Fallen under a spell to see/ be
A Knight of Truth out of traitor arms
And infidelity.
Says he, ‘My heart is set on the grail
And wholly raised above!’
Says she, ‘It’s broken, and half is set
On your true adulterous love.’
‘I am her champion, she is my king’s,
I am their faithful knight!’
‘The Grail can’t be had for half a heart,
You can have that queen tonight.
‘Whisper my name, any name you like,
Any lover you want me to be,
A night of Truth in my traitor arms
And in fidelity.’
‘Come hither, Captain,’ the Grail Maiden sighs,
‘Thither away with me
To the rich wooded valley and holy well
My Waste Land dies to be.
|
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20. |
The Rusted Lance
01:19
|
|||
|
Goodbye green man, goodbye lost king of May,
European grail winner, Best knight.
Goodbye red dragon on a green field.
Nothing could un-mast your glory,
Your beauty’s truth leaping muscle-bound fouls
The dreams of youth without its injured ordinariness
Or age’s silting of its genius,
The best without the thickening uncouth
Slurred self-disgrace, the bruising disproof
Of the mean;
The tarnishing insinuations of time,
The drip-drip discrediting
Of a hero.
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21. |
||||
|
And that is life without heroes?
A washing line, a soap opera
Tabloid-real, told like it is,
Down to earth, endless.
What did they unearth exactly,
Under the soiled Norman Carnage,
Somewhere between a Saxon stronghold
And a Bronze age fort?
Wooden look-out towers
‘More Cymbeline than Caesar’,
A hill defence system
Of water-ditch, timber and earth,
Celtic to its Rubble-core.
But the rubble was Roman
Tiles and blocks of dressed Roman tufa
And the Earth moved
Round that post-Roman Fact.
A red dragon flew
In the cold light of day!
Pillaging pirate English of coin and pot,
Building a wooden-towered Camelot,
Defending there
What was left of Rome!
They found a Man.
Legends have to start somewhere.
In this kitchen-sink-real mumsy domestic
Gossiping for England mundane to fried egg
Week without end Coronation Street
Where I grapple for that gauntlet thrown down
By my earth castle boyhood King In the West…
Grip Excalibur, his magic sword,
Wynebgwrthucher, his red dragon shield,
Rhongomiant, his war-spear, Carwennan,
His knife, Cafall, his faithful war-dog,
Hengroen, his milk-white stallion; take
His epic action-movie lonely westering
Leap of faith into red-tinted closure.
|
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22. |
||||
|
Lord Arthur is gone, I laud my Beloved:
Cross on invincible shield, blood-red,
Dragon on young-summer green, red,
The terrible clatter of returning hooves.
I never quite believed. Always feared him
Dead. But he always came.
Arthur is gone, I laud my Beloved:
Swift white charger swooping like a spear
On the bonfire builders, the wolvers of women,
Scourging the rat run inroads of Europe,
Animal tracks of attacking Saxon,
His spur-tensed Britons beat back the Beast.
And little the faith I had yet in Arthur,
The Angel campaigner, strong as light,
His sun-bright stars above the wicked forest
Seeming to fade. Rusty the scabbard,
Still magic the sword. And, once more, he came.
I’ve believed too little. I make my Confession.
At last I understood. The flincher from spears,
Medraut, was part of Arthur, his shadow,
Chancel and gargoyle had to be cancelled
Where all deeds are drowned, all swords returned:
Avalon. And I’ll run no more.
I’ve believed too little. I make my Confession.
Night and this nunnery will fall. Ravens
Will flock on the gore. Let others keep
A glimmer, a glorious page, of Logres alight
Until the dawn. My confession’s done.
Still my heart waits for hoofbeats.
(Still, my heart waits for hoofbeats…)
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Peacock's Tale Musical Storytelling Sedgeford, UK
It's all right, folks, we're married. A marriage of melody and rhythm ( flirting with harmony & timbre.) Old married woke
folk, indie, Norfolk noir, beat poems, ghazals & Americana for the world from NW Norfolk. Maz lead & harmony vocals, acoustic guitar. Gaz lead & harmony vocals, drum & bass. Traditional tunes with contemporary beats.
garethcalway.blogspot.com/p/doin-different.html
... more
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