MEMORIES

GALLOWS HUMOUR

The Gift

The birds fall silent.
Enki rests his dark head.
Pestilence comes,
vastness, destruction.

In the wastes
shepherds carry on.
Words shine
but hearts are empty.

In spring she left
the underground waters,
her attendants in front and behind,
with sceptre and mace,
fenced round by the demons.

He is absent,
the young poet,
as cities are emptied,
stripped of his power.

Namma, mother of the gods,
carries their tears
to him as he sleeps.

‘My son, wake up!
How can you sleep
as creatures suffer?

Take your gift.
Make new gods
out of the soil.’

Music:  M G Boulter (England)

Picture: Susanne Swanson-Bernard (USA)

Poem: Josephine Dickinson (England)

Matt’s lyric’s for his song:

Gallows Humour

It was the surging of the virus,
You wore something sleeveless in magnificence
It was a distraction, when did all this brightness happen?
I’m hearing birds singing in the trees, no noise from traffic
If I can keep these cogs turning
How good does sunlight look in spring?

I sleep with the window open I like the sound of the ambience
To hear the earth turning, the barking of a dog, is this heaven?
Old familiar sounds so fresh and present
With nowhere to go.

So I sacrifice and I hide, I am an ordinary man with no opinion
They gave me freedom but removed my purpose
But to finish the ink from my pen, to write something different
About a troubled time.
But all I can recall is the birdsong and the colour of your dress
Like a seed from heaven.

Susanne writes about her picture

As an artist and a writer, I believe that everything in life is worthy of some form of documentation. With this collage titled “Memories” I follow that train of thought.

The collage shows the isolation we can feel during this time of the Coronavirus.

The red dress stands for a memory of love and simpler days, when spring had arrived and birds were singing. Sadly reminders of Covid19 manage to lurk in the background like a storm cloud making its approach known.

Matt writes about his piece of music

‘Gallows Humour’ was very much written during and about the lockdown here in the UK. The silence in my neighbourhood was so profound and there was this fear, unconscious or otherwise, that the physical world even at its most mundane was suddenly dangerous. The small act of opening the window and breathing fresh air seemed such a liberty for everyone. In a strange way, I felt very present, very alive, and very positive because all expectation had been cut away. I could only queue at the supermarket and stay indoors reading and for once that felt OK.