1. |
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Your world is as big as you make it.
I know, for I used to abide
In the narrowest nest in a corner,
My wings pressing close to my side.
But I sighted the distant horizon
Where the skyline encircled the sea
And I throbbed with a burning desire
To travel this immensity.
I battered the cordons around me
And cradled my wings on the breeze,
Then soared to the uttermost reaches
With rapture, with power, with ease!
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2. |
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My People / Dreams
The night is beautiful,
So the faces of my people.
The stars are beautiful,
So the eyes of my people.
Beautiful, also is the sun.
Beautiful, also are the souls of my people.
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
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3. |
Easter (Katharine Tynan)
01:56
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Bring flowers to strew His way,
Yea, sing, make holiday;
Bid young lambs leap,
And earth laugh after sleep.
For now He cometh forth
Winter flies to the north,
Folds wings and cries
Amid the bergs and ice.
Yea, Death, great Death is dead,
And Life reigns in his stead,
Cometh the Athlete
New from dead Death’s defeat.
Cometh the Wrestler,
But Death he makes no stir,
Utterly spent and done,
And all his kingdom gone.
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4. |
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Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it,
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
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5. |
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When I rise up above the earth,
And look down on the things that fetter me,
I beat my wings upon the air,
Or tranquil lie,
Surge after surge of potent strength
Like incense comes to me
When I rise up above the earth
And look down upon the things that fetter me.
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6. |
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Joseph’s Betrothal / Creation
“Your garden grows a rose”, his people said.
“Yes”, Mary’s father raised his old white head.
“We have a rose”, he answered and his face
Lit with love’s light poured radiance o’er the place.
“We wish to pluck that rose that it may grow
Henceforth in Joseph’s garden”, “Aye, I know,”
Lisped Mary’s father, deeply sunk in thought.
“Transplanting of a rose is always fraught
With danger. Who knows if fresh soil
Will nurture it as ours with skilful toil?
Will love smooth out its petals, shade from sun,
Water when thirsting, tended by your son?”
“My son will tend it, it will bloom more rare,
This rose of yours, entrusted to our care.”
Thus did they toss the matter to and fro.
The parents of the two in sunset’s glow.
A flush, a curve, a wind that blows -
A breath of life, ’twas called a rose.
A little sorrow and joy in part,
A breath of love, ’twas called a heart.
A heart a rose, God took those two.
He wove them together; He called them you.
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7. |
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You have dragged me on through the wild wood ways,
You have given me toil and scanty rest,
I have seen the light of ten thousand days
Grow dim and sink and fade in the West.
You shall follow once more a wandering fire
You shall gaze again on the starlit sea,
You shall gather roses out of the mire:
Alas, but you shall not remember me.
Behold, I reach forth from beyond the years,
I will cry to you from beneath the sod,
I will drag you back from the starry spheres,
Yea, down from the very bosom of God.
You shall follow once more a wandering fire
You shall gaze again on the starlit sea,
You shall gather roses out of the mire:
Alas, but you shall not remember me.
You cannot hide from the sun and the wind,
Or the whispered song of the April rain,
The proud earth that moulds all things to her mind,
Shall gather you out of the deeps again.
You shall follow once more a wandering fire
You shall gaze again on the starlit sea,
You shall gather roses out of the mire:
Alas, but you shall not remember me.
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Loah Dublin, Ireland
Loah is Sallay-Matu Garnett, a singer songwriter of Irish /Sierra Leonian descent. She performs her unique blend of Afro- folksoul across solo projects and with collaborators. In 2020, she returned to her old vocation as a pharmacist to frontline, yet continued to contribute culturally, presenting several music shows and releasing When I Rise Up, an EP of poetry from the 1920s set to music. ... more
Loah recommends:
Moses sounds like heaven when he sings and his songwriting is elegant, profound and beautiful x
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