Lyrics

Little White Clouds

Little white clouds
Light as cotton candy
Catch us as we fall

Little white clouds
Soft as soft embrace
Catch us as we fall

Little white clouds
Floating on the wind
Catch us as we fall

Little white clouds
White as dirty snow
Catch us as we fall

Compassion all but left us
Integrity retreats
Humanity, hands held high
Justice bids defeat

Little white clouds catch us
Catch us as we fall

Little white clouds
Suspensions in the air
Catch us as we fall

Little white clouds
Interlacing like a blanket
Catch us as we fall

Little white clouds
Of singular persuasion
Catch us as we fall

Little white clouds
Intermittent vagabonds
Catch us as we fall

Gratitude, head bowed down
Love sheds salty tears
Morality, the first to leave
Conscience lives in fear

As we fall from grace and favour
We fall in space and time
We fall to false not candour
We fall to rob life blind

Little white clouds catch us
Catch us as we fall
The great descent of fallen angels
Little white clouds
Catch us

The Rose

A rose in bloom in a gardened room
Plucked by hands so fair
A table laid, preparations made
The rose is placed with care
A shy ‘hello’, eyes search to know
If the other feels the same
A shy ‘goodbye’ met by hopeful eyes
A rose exchanged
A promise made

A blushing face neath a veil of lace
Her hand, passed on, entwines
And with reverence placed on a tome of grace
The rose encased inside
Eager words are spoke and emotions choke
Her lover’s turn of phrase
From this day on, two lives now one
A vow exchanged
A promise made

As seasons pass, first child to last
A family two, has grown
And each head blessed with the words that press
The rose, now chestnut brown
Between ivory page, the rose it fades
Each child, with wings, takes flight
All that remains, great love yet pain
A rose exchanged
A promise made

Some years on grandchildren come
Support a man so frail
With weathered hands, upon the land
He lays the rose now pale
A story is read about a life well led
The lovers’ rose in bloom
From the book of grace with scented space
Their rose exchanged
Their promise made

Jars

A jar for love
A jar for joy
A jar for solitude
A jar for hope
A jar for life
A jar for seeking truth
A jar for melancholy
A jar that holds one tear
A jar for saying sorry
A jar for all you fear

Pick a jar, take it down
Which one will you choose
A jar for every nuance, every purpose, every mood

Pick a jar, take it down
Choose one from the shelf
Take only what you need to truly find yourself

Ancient jars of mystery
Hold tales from long ago
Jars clear and fine with crystal lines
Hold secrets never told
A jar of brass for courage
A jar of ebony
Holds the darkest thoughts and dreams
Of who you might have been

A jar for strength and fortitude
A jar to test your faith
A jar which holds compassion
A jar of rage and hate
A jar for every story
All regrets, all love affairs
A jar for every child
Who’s whispered magic to the air

Aubergine for passion
Cadmium seeks a friend
Azure blue for all the days
When sorrow never ends
Scarlet whispers promise
Vermillion keeps you safe
The jade looks to serenity
For calm and quite space

Pick a jar, take it down
Which one will you choose
A jar for every nuance, every purpose, every mood

Pick a jar, take it down
Choose one from the shelf
Take only what you need to truly find yourself

Performed with Linsey Pollak – ‘An evening of improvisations’ – Maleny, May 2013.

What Would You Have Me Do / ‘Milonga’

I dance as though I’m dreaming
Our hearts are so revealing
My lips they long to speak it
The longing lies beneath it
Embarrassed eyes down-turning
So little said in yearning
As hearts and heads keep falling
Love seems to find its calling
To ask is this completeness
A feeling from the nearness
No more a love forsaken
A heart has been awakened
We seek and end to longing
What would you have me do
Love me so deep
‘Til light returns once more

Hearts lost in situation
Embraces long mistaken
Look to your eyes I find it
The knowing lies behind it
To cherish all remaining
A heart is not distaining
Flight to a place uncertain
But shame has drawn the curtain
True words are left unspoken
So many lying broken
While tears they keep on falling
Lives have divergent calling
We seek an end to longing
What would you have me do
Love me so deep
‘Til light returns once more

In time we cry to remember
The dream our hearts thought forever
The dream of passion together
As love finds time rewinding once again
Yearnings no longer forgotten
Our arms they reach for one embrace
What would you feel in a moment
If love was caught out of place

If hearts were lost and never found
What would you feel if you were near
What would you find, what would you fear
A heart still beats when love is broken and undone
‘Til light returns once more

I dance as though I’m drifting
I wonder what you’re thinking
A heart it seeks reason
When love discovers treason
Our bodies keep implying
The fear we keep denying
That love has been forsaken
No more to be awakened
New love is so revealing
In time it comes concealing
What could we find tomorrow
The joy, or pain and sorrow
When hearts they seek belonging
What would you have me do

What would you feel if you were near
What would you find, what would you fear
A heart still beats when love is broken and undone
‘Til light returns once more

Text written to ‘Milonga’ by Jorge Cardoso, as performed by The Saruzu Quartet.

PLAY The Saruzu Quartet: ‘Milonga’

Tears of Joy

A storms draws near
It bears me down
Upon a field of green release me
And lightness comes
But answer this
How a heart can bear to hear a child’s prayer

This child of light
That bears the name
From a time of fear release me
And tears of joy will fall
So take my hand
And we’ll walk together towards the light to find
A new day has come

And tears will fall when it comes

What may befall, a ravaged land
A time may come, it’s close at hand
All life will cease to be the same
For all we’ve done we’ll feel ashamed

A child to hold is to believe
To give us hope, help us to breathe
To choose to live, to choose to change
To choose to fight and mend our ways

A child of light has entered here before
To guide and to prepare for what’s in store
So take my hand
And we’ll walk together towards the light to find
A new day has come

To strive to seek and not to yield
To strive to satisfy the needs
Of one so young, yet so unfurled
To all that’s said and all that’s heard

If to believe is to make you strong
Embrace a child and we’ll all move on

For all that’s come to pass and all that lies bereft before
Will centre on this moment like never …

For, if to believe is to make you strong
Embrace a child and we’ll all move on
In our embrace they will be the change
And we’ll find what’s lost and we’ll rearrange

And tears of joy will fall when it comes …

Music © Aaron Hopper ‘Intense Spider’/Andrew Veivers ‘Noroeste’
Lyrics © Kacey Patrick ‘Tears of Joy’

This text began as lyrics to a work by The Saruzu Quartet – ‘Noroeste’.
It evolved into Tears of Joy and was performed for the first time by stringmansassy at the National Folk Festival (Canberra), Easter 2012.

A Pure Heart (A Maid’s Lament)

If one’s pure heart is tainted for a time
Can one’s pure heart remain to feel rewind
If I conceal all that I’ve done
Can my poor heart begin whence it begun

He was my love, adoring me
With purest heart, naive and free
But in my selfish heart I found
A place to lie and to be proud

To scorn another’s love so pure
To break a heart, leave it unsure
Of all the gifts it could receive
From one such heart, naive and free

But did I know where scorn would lead
I surely would have taken heed
And nurtured love so pure and true
The games I played, I came to rue

If one’s pure heart is tainted for a time
Can one’s pure heart remain to feel rewind
If I reveal all that I’ve done
Can my poor heart begin whence it begun

In search of high and richer life
I came to be another’s wife
And spurned a pure untainted love
For the life I had dreamed of

In doing so, I broke a heart
Which for it’s strength, shattered like glass
And never more was it to be
A heart so pure, naive and free

A ship, it bore him from the land
He took his love far from my hand
And left a message etched in stone
Of how one’s scorn could cut to bone

And when the waves, they bore him down
And in those depths, a pure love drowned
I had not had the chance to tell
Of how my heart, it loved him well

Sirens who call him to the deep
Know that my poor heart surely weeps
Release and send him home to me
And I shall love, naive and free

If one’s pure heart is tainted for a time
Can one’s pure heart remain to feel rewind
If I reveal my love to thee
Can my poor heart forever live….in memory of thee

You Would Be Mine

Another place another time
I know you would be mine
Another space were we inclined
I know you would be mine
If to embrace to feel sublime
I know you would be mine
If to erase and leave behind
I know you would be mine this time

Like a tide against the shore
I retreat still wanting more
Where dampness soaks the sand, a desire it expands
Along the ebb and flow of seas
Where the waves crash over me
Every time we came to pass I cannot breathe

Like an apple from a tree
Enticed by gravity
To be caught within a hand and surrender to the man
Who could devour with a breath
All resistance I have left
Every time we come to pass I would be free

If there is more than one
For each and everyone
You would be one of those ones for me
If I could step outside
My current life
Surrender to igniting strife
I’d cross divides to realise
And actualise desires inside

Like a moth drawn through the night
Singe-ing wings in candlelight
I flutter in the wake of the ripples that you make
And treat with nonchalance and fear
The sense of you so near
Every time we come to pass I cannot breathe

Like the movement of a moon
With an orbit gone too soon
I revolve around and wait, in an state, as I anticipate
What madness it would be
If my will abandoned me
Every time we come to pass I would be free

Another place another time
I know you would be mine
Another space were we inclined
I know you would be mine
If to embrace to feel sublime
I know you would be mine
Another place we’d be entwined
And I know you would be mine

Inspired by ‘Invocation’ from Beyond Words – Bobby McFerrin.

Invocation

Wollumbin / ‘Tyalgum Dawn’

In early morning light
In solitude it stands
A sentinel is proud
Above a subdued land

The catcher of the clouds
Swathed in morning mist
Unfurling from the landscape
Like spiders’ filament

Silhouettes of trees
Sit smudged against the scene
Their tendrils catch the creeping light
Then turn from grey to green

Breezes swirl, caressing
Vast undulating fields
Which ripple from the forest
That clothe this sentinel

As dawn’s first ray alights
Atop the mountain’s brow
Then refracts down through the forest
To hushed and sleepy towns

———

This is an undulating land
Formed in eons past
Its ancient rim, a remnant
Of molten rock and blast

And high above this valley
In forests thick and wise
Trees remain from ancient times
To stand and to remind

And there amongst the undergrowth
A chorus deep within
Resounds the call of early morn
Which echos down the stream

The first peoples, they know
The sacred in this place
The those who came thereafter
The heart within this space

If Wollumbin is the heart
The caldera is the arms
Embracing all who dwell here
In intoxicating charm

As Morning mists unfurl
And reveal a bounty grand
A sentinel stands proud
Above an ancient land

Adapted and used as text for ‘Tyalgum Dawn : for soprano and string orchestra’, composed by Ann-Carr Boyd. Commissioned for the 20th Anniversary of the Tyalgum Festival of Classical Music, 2011. Performed by the Camerata of St John’s and Kacey Patrick (soprano).

The Wall

Brick by brick, tile by tile
We built a wall which stretched for miles
Each piece was laid with silent rage
And mortared with resentment
Sometimes I’d feel you trowelling there
Upon your side, with extra care
Ensuring all the seals were fixed
All holes surely cemented

Our wall it started with one word
One slight misunderstanding
But then it grew and each brick laid
Continued the compounding
Until it stretched from here to there
One horizon to nowhere
Our wall it stretched, it wove and weaved
Beyond all understanding

Each brick a word
Each tile a hurt
The mortar, when we’d felt unheard
And each of us upon our side
We worked upon the wall

The bricks once small to manage
Began to grow in size
Until the effort to construct the wall
It made us tired
And sometimes we would double back
And find a brick we’d laid
And carve a pattern in it
With such purpose to dismay

As the wall grew long and wide
We started on the height
We’d build it up to hide the sun
We’d work both day and night
Until the only good to find
Was resting in the shade
Of the wall of words and spite
We had so deftly made

Each brick a word
Each tile a hurt
The mortar, when we’d felt unheard
And each of us upon our sides
We worked upon the wall

One day a little crack appeared
A shaft of sunlight did reveal
A glimmer and a promise
The hope of new contentment
You from your end, I from mine
We met at last on either side
We laid our trowels upon the ground
Exhausted and repentant

I placed my hands upon the bricks
I sensed you do the same
And then we pushed with all our might
And felt the wall give way
Our wall that stretched from here to there
To dust it crumbled, fine and fair
And now it’s only ruins of the ramparts
That remain

Each brick a word
Each tile a hurt
The mortar, when we’d felt unheard
Now each of us upon our sides
We work upon the wall

The Griffin and The Dove

A snow white dove she sits, beneath a walnut tree
Her snow white breast lit up against a darkened shade of green
And his adoring eyes
Caressing her with care
He sees her grace and charm and all the difference there

She sees the Griffin watching with his calm unwavering gaze
His gentle heart encased within a dragon’s crimson scales
This creature of a myth
Glints ruby in the sun
So different from herself and yet for her, the only one

How could a love
Ones such as this
Survive beyond the sanctuary of this garden
Out in a world
Where sameness holds fast
Could they be brave enough to share their love and rise above
How could a love
So real yet so stark
Survive beyond the sanctuary of this garden
Would others remark
Or would the fable stand true
That a love so full of promise will overcome the rules

A snow white dove she sits, beneath a walnut tree
All the while she wonders on the world she cannot see
Where poppies all compete
With roses’ faded blooms
As the setting sun reflects a darkening afternoon

But to overcome the fear and embrace with all your soul
The difference that attracts
That completes, that makes you whole
To celebrate your love with all who come to pass
To be strong within each others arms
Dismantle walls and shatter glass…..

The Griffin in majestic grace, sweeps down to join her there
Beneath the ancient walnut tree, beside the rusted chair
And with tenderest embrace
Her feathers white as snow
She nestles neath the crimson scales, in love she’ll always know

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