extracts from the  The Voice Project Choir‘s Singing the City, a Writers’ Centre Norwich co-commission with the Norfolk and Norwich Festival, 2012

The French Weavers’ Lullaby

Dormer, dormer, petite enfant,
Petite enfant, dormer
Dormer, dormer, petite enfant,
Petite enfant, dormer

The cattle out on the marshes low
As the night settles in
We climb into our little boat
Set sail for a new morning

(chorus)

The elm tree whispers softly to you
Sleep in my arms safe and sound
That old tree knows what to do
To return you back to the ground

(chorus)

A fire sweeps the city tonight
It glows on the edge of your sleep
All the birds have taken to flight
While pales from the well all weep.

(chorus)

*

Gathered Round the Parish Pump

Brom’s tracking stars to improve his humours
Peter’s spending time bloodletting with the leeches
Oscar’s down the barbers for a spot of trepanning
Margo’s swimming in the river to cure her impetigo

Pull the bucket up boys!
Pull it up to hide me so!

Mary’s under blankets fighting off the ague
John’s taken off a lump with a sacred bit of flint
Joan’s smeared in pigeon dung and honey for her kidney stones
Kelvin has a weeping sore tickled by the sage

Pull up the bucket boys!
Pull it up to hide me so!

Bridie holds a candle close to her tooth
Alice has a cross shaved into her hair
Robin has a pin going in for the cataract
Poor old crying Thomas is tethered to a pew

Pull up the bucket boys!
Pull it up to hide me so!

Pull up the bucket boys!
Pull it up and hide me so!

*

Whisper Game for an Alleyway
to be spoken by a large group with laughter, whistles, echoes,
squeals and a mix of quieter and louder parts as the individuals see fit.

Come back. Follow follow follow        fall
back follow. In the light rain, in the light
rain.                  Fall back. Fall back. Seven
years of floating back to the heart of it. In
the light rain I will fall back.    Suddenly this
light seems to ask me   sudden and sad
stared. Lucie Rie came down to see me at
the little jetty. Lucy ran to palmers street
and fell in with the city.                            The
river ran down the street and ran the
children blind. Come back, come back.
Follow follow follow. Let’s slow dance in
the light rain. Harriet says the captain’s sick,
the hill is awash with pain.  See ship follow
ship worship me in the rain, in the lightest
rain.      Can you hear the cats mewing in the
merchants hall? Can you pop over to
Muspole street and talk to the pool? Can
you follow me back through the streets?
Alvo with the night sweats       Alvo in the
hall. Alvo wants the weasel, follow follow
fall.
_____Target see target, pull the tiger’s tail
Take the tart to the tar and tie her little
tallow. Follow follow follow.    The rivers
buried deep, deep beneath our feet.
Cuckoo spit and cow parsley
The seconds raise their heads again
See you leave it long enough
And all changes anyway.         Pies, pies,
pies and beer.     In the light rain.
In the light rain. Dig boys dig. The
river’s buried deep.           Fall back. Follow
me.        The captain’s sick. Sad captain sea
sick sad. It’s not gonna go away. The tallow
weasel spins.  See that you leave it long
enough.              Leave it long enough.
___________Follow follow
___________Follow follow
___________Follow follow me.

an extract from The Voice Project Choir‘s Singing the City, a Writers’ Centre Norwich co-commission with the Norfolk and Norwich Festival, 2012

____

Architecture is Frozen Music

All:
Like a building blazing with life
Like buildings that join hands across a street
Like voices linked in the air in fancy knots
Like a tug of rope in the throat
Like chains, like chimes we sing

Left:
Feet pattering up the street, I swallow them.

Right:
Eyes flickering over doors, I offer myself to them.

Left:
Who’s looking?

Right:
What’s cooking?

Left:
When she left the house it was dark in the morning.

Right:
When they returned it was dark in the evening.

Left:
And he rose from his chair and slammed the door tight.

Right:
And the radio came on with the sound of breath.

All breath-whistling.

Left:
And they rose on a gust as if through the chimney.

Right:
So the eldest poked the ashes while the youngest was dreaming

Left:
The police called round, they beat at the door.

Right:
Three blind mice ran across the floor.

All:
Three blind mice. Three blind mice.

Left:
The owl in the shop blinked. I was alone.

Right:
The books and coins in the window, the marquetry of the pavement.

Left:
The dead are out shopping. They’ve gone to the market.

Right:
Jenny is expecting her third. Rose her fifth.

Left:
You have to watch the river behind you. It’s always at your back.

Right:
You watch the river at night when it is glittering and black.

All:
We are the river, the stream under the water.
We are the bricks and the flint in our bones.
We are the voice that breaks in the air when the birds sing.
We are the street and the river, the blood in our veins.
We’re pumped through the body by the heart in your possession.
We emerge from your mouths like breathing aloud.
We are the street and the river, the noise in the lungs.
We are passing away as we all do in passing.
We are street and river and voice.
We are passing.

The last shadow left quietly, flickering like a movement from a horse at the far end of a paddock caught in the corner of your eye, away under the old pine trees that ring the property, trees so old now that their limbs are tearing loose from their trunks and collapsing hundreds of feet at a time, splintering the tree itself as they fall. Above is a sky that the trees can never fill, though with all their vegetable guile they try to fill that sky with pine. The horse will come up despite all this and stand in the dusk in the paddock, like the beginning of something.

Hamlet at Brancaster, boiling skulls and winding staithes

The shoreline is a promise, shivering before them as strangely as the dog they are walking. Muddy riverbed, pink-footed geese, waddling swan and distant dunes go out to the sea and spring back into the heads of the four people and one dog walking. One of them bends down to pick up the skull of a seabird fallen at his feet, wings splayed. He holds it out. The others watch its silence there in front of them. To define true death there is nothing but death. He says he will boil it in his kitchen. They tramp across the land as if it is the palm of a giant hand offered to them. Before they can figure it out the winding staithe leads them like a fortuneteller’s joke to the end of a line in the middle of a marsh. The shoreline’s dunes and sand, its seals and towns, are kept at a distance while mud-stuck boats are suddenly buoyant on fingers of tide that urge them back to the human car they came in.  Later the moon will rise behind them, the sun will fall at their feet. Waves will end like their fathers’ lives on sodden sea walls, as small paradises of paper-wrapped cod and chips warm their laps on the pier of kiosk and playhouse, more matter than art.

Good

Good to see a man repairing a boat today. Good to see a child drag his lunch bag along the ground by one hand while holding his father’s with the other.  Good to know that the past had no idea we were coming.

Sea, again

Travelling all day we come late, as the temperature falls and long winds take a run at us, to the sea. It slaps and moans at the foot of a wall as though somewhere out there it took a wrong turn and ended up here by dismal surprise. The waves won’t give up on wanting to have their way. We know we can leave this spectacle without reaching the end of the story.

Anxiety

Falling asleep he fell into a river, which closed over him. He woke and fell asleep again, falling from a bicycle onto stones then tumbling from the stones into a turbulent river, which closed over him. He woke and fell asleep again, suddenly slipping from the railing of a bridge into a harbor, which closed blue and silent over him. He woke and fell again.

No Word

He became aware of a gate banging in the wind. A merciless sound repeated at every shove of the wind. The gate needed fixing. It needed a bolt or something. He felt helpless every time it banged. He told his psychiatrist about this and the psychiatrist suggested this signified after all, what had happened to his father, his father who used to take him to the football but seemed to find there only despair. He chose the wrong football team, the man said as usual in his usual dispirited way. He would not blame the team that was responsible for so much failure then. After all, teams go through transformations, just like planets and galaxies. He told his friend, Michael, about the gate and together they climbed over the fence of the house where the gate was swinging, and they tied it up. For a little while the gate was left to its own thoughts, left to wondering why it could no longer cry out, ‘I hate you all, I hate you all,’ as a schoolgirl in the street had once called on her way past. Tonight the full moon will be hurtling above the gate, loose as a tossed coin, but nevertheless trapped in this small, deaf universe.