1. |
Mvt 1: The Dark Mirror
07:01
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Silence / Stillness / Darkness / Emptiness
Silence like a frozen lake
Stillness, not the echo of a breath
Two mirrors face to face
reflecting darkness
Two mirrors face to face
reflecting emptiness
Two mirrors face to face
reflecting nothing
The void imploding
an ingot of pure darkness
reduced to a ball-bearing,
a pin-ball magic bullet
that would nail God's palm to Time
and smash the mirrored glass
to shards and slivers
silvering the universe
to flower in a super nova
showering space
with flecks of lava
tumbling through aeons
settling to stillness
in the Light.
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2. |
Mvt 2: Eden
04:56
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Light summons song
from every tongue
The wide horizons
widen eyes
Each grain of sand
unlocks a hand
and grass grows tall as flesh
Fins flash,
fur finds its mate,
the open skies discover flight:
wingbeats, spirallings -
And all creation sings
All creation sings
and apples like a tree of notes
bend down the bough
Time teaches hands to reach and feed
to share and seed
new apple trees
multiplying hands and mouths
like grains of sand
like seas of grass.
The generations rise and pass.
Shadows extend
towards an end without an end
And all creation sings
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3. |
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The great plates shift and link and lock.
Along each wrenched and heaving shore
salt and shaping tongues explore -
Earth starts its clock.
There's now and After to before,
and like a firefly though the dark
Life's unaccountable first spark
begins to chase through spawn and spore.
Out of soupy cauldrons, slime
must slowly learn to crawl and climb.
Interdependencies of flesh and jaw
evolve the razor bill and claw.
Rain wrestles to the light as green
and vast, grass-eating stomachs reign
until time shrouds the green in grey
and strips the cavernous flesh away,
leaving, locked in lava dust,
blood and muscles's darkening rust,
cathedral scaffolding of bone
and random footprints set in stone.
Now an After
After
Now
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4. |
Mvt 4: Man
06:56
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The great apes swung down from the trees
and sniffed the sweet savannah breeze
They scattered north and south and east and west
bent on their amazing quest
that led apemen up to man
gathered in a ragged clan
defenceless till flint struck a spark
and set a boundary to the dark
Fire throws shadows through the cave;
more mouths, more meat;
new hands contrive
the first crude spears; the bison fall
and leave their image on a wall.
Man makes his mark and then moves
on from turf stockade to Babylon.
Mouths and markets, trade and war;
Empires stretch from shore to shore.
Swords and ploughshares take their turn;
the cities then the forests burn.
Furnaces light up the sky
declaring that the dark must die.
The furnace roars: more mouths, more meat.
Turn up the heat; turn up the heat.
More mouths, more land,
and so the forked flames are fanned.
While the black sun finally falls
it burns man's image on to walls.
Forests flame and rivers boil,
a poisoned wind tears at the soil,
oceans sicken, skies ignite,
the last flocks dip in broken flight.
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5. |
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It must have been apparent from the air:
the anorexic shorelines,
icebergs and ice-caps frayed -
the signs of change.
The seabirds saw it, circling high,
the mirror ice holds to the sky,
but could not, as they wheeled and tacked,
evaluate how badly cracked the mirror was,
nor comprehend the message.
It showed a war zone at the poles,
long-range artillery punching holes
through ice, as strong gales stripped
snow towers and glaciers, ripped
the icefields up like slates, then hurled
them round the unprotected world;
a new Pandora's box of tides
and terror-tempests no one rides,
a cataclysm kept on ice
before extorting such a price
in swollen and rampaging seas
that rise, because they cannot freeze,
to flood through delta-basins, drown
factory, farm and sprawling town
and leave vast tracts of fertile land
no more than deserts of blown sand.
The seabirds circle in the sky;
they cannot know the sea is high
or that the ice is wearing thin.
II
Crawl into the ransacked garden,
the ruin of a perfect Eden.
The Tree of Knowledge barely stands
holding five foul apples in its hands.
One is rotten to the core
tormented by the wasps of war.
The next is stripped by acid rain;
another shrivelled by the vengeful sun.
A billion mouths have sucked the fourth one hollow.
The last has nothing left to swallow
lying rancid on the blackening grass.
And so the prophecies have come to pass
Coda
Silence / Stillness / Darkness / Emptiness / Silence
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6. |
Silvered Night
20:04
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Michael Stimpson Salisbury, UK
Michael's works have been performed, commissioned, and recorded by some of the UK's most distinguished artists. They have been performed across the UK and around the world (Australia, Europe, Iran, and the USA).
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