1. |
Rust
05:33
|
|||
I’m still looking for that dark, dark green
Hanging low on late August wheat
The trailing blue sky’s bathing black
I’m stepping forward; I’m looking back
These are rust days
Look how far we’ve come
These are rust days
Do you know where we’re from?
Know where we belong
We can run for the plain
We can run for the sun
We can run for there is
Time to come
The shadows lengthen, longer now
Twilight held on Autumn cloud
The leaves are falling; the lime is last
Tomorrow’s too late now; I’m in the past
I’m still looking for that dark, dark green
Hanging low on the curves at her feet
The withered true sky’s under attack
From storms electric a long way back
These are rust days
Look how far we’ve come
These are rust days
Do you know where we’re from?
Know where we belong.
|
||||
2. |
Ordinary Or Intruder
04:22
|
|||
Are you ordinary or intruder?
Early Jacobean? Late Tudor?
Are you Simon? Are you Peter?
The girl with early computer?
The stage blocks, extra playtime -
This our fortress in the pale sunshine.
How quickly changing, the battle raging
When you’re tasting the scent of power.
Are you ordinary or intruder?
The frail boy who lost his sister?
He was the last to surrender,
He was ordinary not intruder.
The sky’s grey love,
The wood pigeon or the collared dove?
Are you ordinary or intruder?
It’s brutal learning murder.
Are you ordinary or intruder?
Do your best and try to remember.
Are you ordinary or intruder?
The robin, swift or kingfisher?
Are you Simon? Are you Peter?
It’s early, late September.
The sky’s grey love,
The wood pigeon or the collared dove?
We never change,
Our childhood every day.
Are you ordinary or intruder?
Are you Babel? Are you Pisa?
Are you Lasker or Capablanca?
Do your best and try to remember.
Are you ordinary or intruder?
Early Jacobean? Late Tudor?
Are you Simon? Are you Peter?
The girl with early computer?
Are you ordinary or intruder?
Do your best, try to remember.
|
||||
3. |
||||
On the slopes of Chamonix
In the garden of Gethsemane
Between the lines you wrote to me
I will haunt you when I’m gone.
St Agnes and St Genevieve
The Book of Deuteronomy
All there to help me
To haunt you when I’m gone.
All the years of wasted living
All the ways of wasted winning
All the years of wasted, leaving love.
All the years of wasted living
All the ways of wasted winning
All the years of wasted, leaving now.
Through thorn and winter gorse
Beyond the black dog and white horse
The four winds’ cold divorce
Will haunt you when I’m gone.
Rebecca sitting at the well,
Guarding the keys to hell,
There’s nothing to tell,
I will haunt you when I’m gone.
All the ways of wasted living
All the ways of wasted winning
All the ways of wasted, leaving love.
All the ways of wasted living
All the ways of wasted winning
All the ways of wasted, leaving love.
|
||||
4. |
||||
Trowbridge town, Trowbridge town
On the banks of the Biss
Shallow that dirty river
Like a streak of piss.
The county town, Trowbridge town
Where day is black as night
And winter comes in spring
With a bunch of aconites.
Trowbridge town, bent old town
A monkey for a bribe
To nail a blue cat son
To hang him till he died.
Trowbridge town, crooked town
Yes, it did for young poor Tom,
As the mill burnt in flames.
He slept a drunken song.
For the want of blood, they got it quick
But no one saw Tom there,
Least of all Read and Heath
In that blazing summer air.
In Trowbridge town.
The barley, fleece and crown
Respice, prospice, send us down.
In Salisbury sat the jury
That’s who they claimed to be
Ten bare minutes it took them
To find the young the boy guilty.
And if he knew more truth
Tom didn’t say a word,
But sat and lonely listened
And the world outside just heard.
Mr Garrow was his counsel
As thick as shipyard oak
To the gallows went a boy
His defence barely spoke.
The night before his death
Tom wrote his kith and kin
Sending love and hoping
The Lord would save his soul from sin.
But the good Lord’s judgement
Tends to favour those
Who suffer not from war and loss
And all poverty exposed.
So came the day a Trowbridge son
Was sent to the rope to die
On his nineteenth birthday
For someone else’s crime.
At the bleak and lonely side
Of a bleak and lonely road,
A body hanged, a body hung
And so the story’s told.
But they carried Tom across the plain
Back to Trowbridge town,
So you and I, the sons of others
Can lay our flowers down.
The barley, fleece and crown
Respice, prospice, send us down
The barley, fleece and crown
Mea culpa – send us down.
Lie on the chalk hills and gaze at the moon
Count the stars with a daisy
We’ll be all stars soon.
Like two lovers we’ll lie
Like two lovers, we’ll break down and cry.
Wiltshire boy, Wiltshire boy,
Wiltshire boy, it’s in every line you thought
It’s in every chalk path you walk
Wiltshire boy
It’s in every single battle you fought
Wiltshire boy
Wiltshire boy.
Trowbridge town, my home town
Or as close as I will get,
In there many cousins
That I have never met.
This old town, red brick town
Its soul as dark as lead,
Days built of ashes
Of the living and the dead.
By thick of night Trowbridge town
In rain stained streetlight red,
The lanes shiver low,
The thunder’s overhead.
In the streets of English towns
Old cries still you’ll hear
The groan of broken children
And the wind howls in your ears.
I left that place years ago
As they pulled the old ways down
But when I wake in a cold sweat sleep
That old town haunts me now.
|
||||
5. |
Indian Queens
03:59
|
|||
I gathered my men
Cherry-Garrard and Crean
Left the dogs and explorers
Headed west out to
Indian Queens
Trading my cousin’s ashes
For a jug of coffee and cream
On that bleak stretch of road
Just short of
Indian Queens
The damage was boats
It’s a heavy machine
A surge of green water
Sinking ships
And surfacing submarines
The salt winds are blowing west
For you I nearly did my best
Of Spanish descent
I fell in love with a girl
Her father was jealous
Zealous,
Ain’t that the way of the world?
The bells of St Tudy
Peel o’er the lea
I got you in my heart
Her in my head
And The Devil’s Jump in front of me
I gathered my men
Knispel, Hartmann, Prien
Through the wolves to the waves
Changed course
East a quarter north
Backing south, Indian Queens
The salt winds are blowing west
For you I nearly did my best
I used to be scared
I used to be free
Now I’m just stunned
Dumb, numb and on the run
To Indian Queens
You can measure success
Whatever that means
By the hours you spend
As yourself without pretending
To be
I gathered my men
Irving and Mallory
We scaled the moor
Til the storm broke forth
Eight fathoms short
Indian Queens
The salt winds are blowing west
For you I nearly did my best
Life hangs limply
From an elder tree
Drawn and quartered
It’ll sing in a whisper
The robin’s lullaby to me
My time has been good
My time has been lean
My time’s nearly up now
Maybe I’ll see you
Down in Indian Queens.
|
||||
6. |
Talk Left Walk Right
04:15
|
|||
Under willows, the River Ouse
I’m talking May, maybe June
1922 – ish.
Ich bin nicht (blue)
BA11 1EU
Am I sounding clear?
Am I getting through?
On Chesil Beach
A blue-green hue
I’m looking for Jurassic clues
When from the gloom stepped
Billy Bragg and his dog
Or was it Jacob Rees Mogg?
It’s hard to tell in a sea fog
who’s who.
We all do
Talk left and walk right.
I sold my house
And made some money.
Now I divide my time
Between Padstow and Burundi.
Aah – the festival season’s here
I can’t wait to see
Glastonbury on the BBC
When the A37 is closed.
We talk left and walk right.
|
||||
7. |
Moon Over Mire
04:18
|
|||
The moonlight on the cold sea
‘Mummy’, whispers child,
But the boat is empty, sinking
And the sea is black and wild.
Gentle God, meek and mild
Spare a little mercy.
The sea gives up its dead
Red t-shirt on Turkish sand,
Children judged by what deed
Will never rise from this land.
There is only hell in these hands
And bloodshed.
The stars are high; the stars are fire.
Is there still moon
Over mire?
The eyes are deep and black and tight
And wide in deathly stares,
Scraps of human rags
In ancient city squares.
Our failures theirs
And the sea is cold tonight.
The stars are high; the stars on fire.
Where is the moon
Over mire?
|
||||
8. |
Till The Day I'm Done
04:34
|
|||
I stood between the shore and the water
Your eyes, pale as sand.
You ran to me like a daughter
With early violets in your hand.
Our sweet sun set below the briar
Damsel flies on flowering rush
The swallows gather on the wire
And they are gone in the September blush.
Tomorrow and its cause
Greater than us all
I love you now and til the day I’m done
Twilight’s lonely course
Closer than we thought
I love you now and til the day I’m done.
The moon is rising in the twilight
Above the church where we were blessed.
I brought us wood for the fireside
The leaves are as dark as they’ll get.
I am standing on field at midnight
The frost is thick around my shoes.
I gathered everything of you around me
Here until the night turns blue.
Tomorrow and its cause
Greater than us all
I love you now and til the day I’m done
The twilight’s lonely course
Closer than we thought
I love you now and til the night is dawn
The cross is elder borne
The staff is made of thorn
The ever-blackening tor above us
In the rain is torn
The snow that softly falls
Rarer than the call
Of wild drifts of heavens
beyond its ragged shore.
|
||||
9. |
Me Of Course
05:27
|
|||
I blame the Christian
I blame the Jew
I blame the Muslim
The heretic and you
I blame anything and anyone
But myself, of course.
I blame the parent
I blame the law
I blame the system
That believes in itself at all
I blame anything and everyone
But myself of course.
What a wonderful world
So pleased to be involved
What a wonderful world
Just let me get my excuses and go.
It’s a world full of symbols
Systems and signs
It’s a world that barely dares
To look you in the eyes
It’s a world fit for no one
But me of course.
What a wonderful world
So pleased to be involved
What a wonderful world
Just let me get my excuses and go.
People full of pity
For themselves they’re obsessed
Reams of confession
Yet all self-possessed
By a dream that is flawed
Vague and badly dressed
In slim celebration
Of its own weird success
It’s a dream fit for no one
But me of course.
What a wonderful world
So please to be on board
What a wonderful world
Just let me get my excuses and go.
What a wonderful world
So please to be on board
What a wonderful world
Just let me get my excuses and go.
I blame the foxglove
Crushed between my teeth
I blame the breeze
Blowing between my mother’s knees
I blame the wealthy
English south east
I blame anything, anyone, everything
But me of course
But me of course.
|
Streaming and Download help
If you like Ben Gunstone, you may also like:
Bandcamp Daily your guide to the world of Bandcamp