Flood Song

"Il était une petite navire
Qui n'avait ja ... ja ... jamais navigué"
—French nursery rhyme

I

The time for love is away and gone
And the waters are rising,
One day we'll awake to a new dawn,
One that is so surprising,

For the water will be under the door
And through the windows too
And the streets will be flowing rivers,
Waters of darkness through

Subways and squares will roar,
And the sea will be coming in
At all the open places,
No city any more,

No place to hide,
For the melting North Pole ice
Has turned into a tidal surge,
Thoughtless and merciless,

Barons of industry,
Various professions
Will float away in boats,
No crimes and no confessions;

And we will all be drowning,
Who have not learned to swim
Because we believed that T.V. clown,
What happened to him?

He's sitting in the mountains,
Laughing with the President.
And his family and friends?
Upwardly resident.

II

Little ship, O little ship,
Where are you going?
North, my dear, to the Arctic lands
Where it is always snowing.

Little ship, O little ship,
Why are you leaving?
The storm from the desert is coming here,
And there will be much grieving.

Little ship, O little ship,
Why is there danger?
The world has caught a fever, dear,
And the weather's getting stranger.

Little ship, O little ship,
How have you reasoned?
The greedy ones have fouled the air,
And the earth is poisoned.

Little ship, O little ship,
What are you seeking?
The places where the glaciers groan,
For their ice is melting.

Little ship, O little ship,
Can I come with you?
Stay and tell your children now,
Or they won't forgive you.

Copyright © Charlotte Appleton 2003

Fugue

Let's talk of life, not death
For there's so little time
Then substance stops.

Though we are fat or thin or tall or short
It's all a matter of the human sort,
Though atoms split, genes double round the twist,
The comet falls towards the star, so love
Will melt the needle's eye and worlds shall turn
To bring the seasons of our lust's eclipse
Out of the dark, to light-years in the sun.

The water flows, the river in its course
Carves out the valley, in its own damp age
A sculptor of the limestone. Its wet god
Has made the earth yield up her secret place
For mortals to inhabit, till and reap
The generations of each others' sleep
Harvesting the fruit of tree and vine,
Piling up terraces for plenty's crop, 
Pressing the oil, fermenting the good wine.

Bright oranges like lamps hang in the dusk
Of leaves and stems, and light the way to me,
For one such as yourself, a conqueror
Of bitter fate, who knows just how to see
What spirits burn, and how the day unravels
A proud man's wish, and where the music travels.

So that's the score, awaiting all the muses,
A proposition, such as a sage uses,
Or artist, when he's in his better state,
Living a life with which to meditate
On pleasure, pain, frustration and desire,
Writing the strokes which set the mind on fire.

Copyright © Charlotte Appleton 2003

After Bach

(Brandenburg Concerto No. 13, Movement 1)

These are all the children
We will ever have
Though they live forever
And do not behave
As normal children will;
Though we are misbegotten
And must taste the dark,
Whilst there are minds to listen
And hands to forge a mark,
These shall not be forgotten
Nor fail to strike that spark,
That fiery, icy season
That knows no years at all.

Copyright © Charlotte Appleton 2003

Polemic

(Listening to Carmina Burana)

The greatest gifts are given like curses,
For there is nothing else that you can do,
There was never any money making verses;

You have been blessed and cursed, and so have I,
The music and the words do not contain it,
Flesh, blood are not enough to tell it by,

The power and the glory, love and pain
That surge along the pulse to turn the world
That little step away from its decline

To a careening mudball without thought
Or say in life to speak of, since its mind
And body is in us, who set at nought

Whole cities with a gesture. Only love
Conceived and borne by every messenger
Can heal this sickness, gradually move

The nations from their wars, and you and me
From separation to proximity.

Copyright © Charlotte Appleton 2003