Ancient History

from Harp Songs of a Land Woman by Bethan Le Mas

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lyrics

What god or fate or pharaoh
Mapped us in these fey ley lines?
We're carved in stone and split in two
In dolerite and Saracen spines
Brought by boat and time to be stood
Knotted together like carpenters' wood
In the basin of a fertile land we stand
Ready at Arthur's hand we stand

To speak the sun's revolve
Into magic when the morning clears
To map the strangely passing
Of the winter summer years
I fear they did not know but only knew
They must stand us here
For stone calls out to stone when souls
Are split as we are split, my dear

Call and repeat and repeat and call
And the owl has it wrong and the cuckoo will fall
And the breaker will snatch what rocks it can
Snatch but we stand far inland

Does it please you to be thought of this way?
As hewn-off granite or sculpted clay?
It is the only way I find easy to say
How bones are just stones in the remains of the day
How love eternal inters all its promises in earth
Smooths them over solemnly with velvet turf
But if we are turf and earth and bird
And day and night and dolerite
Look! How we stand and stand and will not let go
Not for any god or fate or pharaoh

credits

from Harp Songs of a Land Woman, released April 17, 2020

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about

Bethan Le Mas England, UK

I am a British singer-songwriter, playing piano, guitar, cello,Celtic harp, ukulele, and whatever else I can get my hands on. Livestreaming on twitch.tv/cornyears

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