Listener. Lemn Sissay
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‘To go step by step we begin with the personal pronouns and the verb “to be”.’
Semere Woldegabir, Amharic for Foreigners
‘If, as Marx said, religion is the opiate of the people, then nationalism is the crack cocaine.’
Gaiem Kibreab, Birkbeck College, May 2008
CONTENTS
Let There Be Peace
Rain
The Actor’s Voice
Patterns
Moving Target
Laying the Table
Perfect
Gambian Holiday Maker
Listener
Ricochet
Documentary
Every Day Living
Elephant in the Room
Architecture
The Letter
Molasses and Long Shadows
Moving Mountains
Manchester Piccadilly
Remembering the Good Times We Never Had
Some Things I Like
The Man in the Hospital
* * * * This
The Lost Key
Magpie
Before We Get Into This
Doris
Flags
Intimate Anger
Advice for the Living
In the Kingdom of the Blind
Inspiration
Olympic Invocation
Salt Mind
Signs
The Shadow of the Laburnum
The Battle of Adwa, 1896
The Gilt of Cain
Applecart Art
I Will Not Speak Ill of the Dead
Transistor
This Train (Sing Along)
Molten
Horizons
Dei Miracole
Christmas
Catching Numbers
Red Sky Dawn
Winter: Shepherd’s Warning
Spring: Mayday Mayday
Summer: Mountain Top
Autumn: Lost Bronze
Barley Field
The Boxer
Time Bomb
Torch
The Queen’s Speech
Summer of Love: A Year in Black and White
Acknowledgements
Let there be peace
So frowns fly away like albatross
And skeletons foxtrot from cupboards;
So war correspondents become travel show presenters
And magpies bring back lost property,
Children, engagement rings, broken things.
Let there be peace
So storms can go out to sea to be
Angry and return to me calm;
So the broken can rise and dance in the hospitals.
Let the aged Ethiopian man in the grey block of flats
Peer through his window and see Addis before him
So his thrilled outstretched arms become frames
For his dreams.
Let there be peace.
Let tears evaporate to form clouds, cleanse themselves
And fall into reservoirs of drinking water.
Let harsh memories burst into fireworks that melt
In the dark pupils of a child’s eyes
And disappear like shoals of darting silver fish.
And let the waves reach the shore with a
Shhhhhhhhhh shhhhhhhhh shhhhhhhhhhh.
This is a celebration of sound,
Of words said after the phone’s put down,
After the door’s shut at the editor’s cut –
Of thoughts held after the word ‘but…’
This is the sound. The actor’s sound.
Of inflections after the flick of ash,
Before the crash, before the whiplash;
Of thoughts collecting before they arrive,
Of the deep breath before the dive.
This is the sound,
Of tender fingers in a clenched fist,
Of the wind carrying an invisible kiss,
Of a secret unfolding wish,
Before the candle blows like a lisp.
This is a celebration of sound,
Of words said after the phone’s put down,
After the door’s shut at the editor’s cut –
Thoughts said after the word ‘but …’
Thoughts caught between the lines –
The reading sounds of needing minds.
This is the sound of beneath the laugh,
Beneath the draft, beneath the craft –
The space between the paragraphs,
The pause between the polygraph,
The actor acting out of her skin,
The sound of shedding sins.
The sound of spirit, the sound of soul,
The sound of heat, the sound of old
Dreams fading, reawakening time;
Of hope breaking the mould of mind,
Of the beat before the hands clap,
The click, the clack, the trip, the trap;
The