In St Mungo’s Cathedral, Kirkwall on the Orkney Islands, there is a tapestry made from remnants of materials found in Norwegian churches (old curtains, tablecloths and so forth). The tapestry had been gifted by a Norwegian diocese as a demonstration of their bonds of affection for people of the Orkney Islands. I thought this was a powerful image. I thought of the remnants of material objects that tie us together, to the past, and to the future. A ‘peerie boat’ is, in Orkney, a small boat.
Remnants of a Shetland shawl once perfectly spun, Scraps of a tent bleached in the Cornish sun, Shreds of bunting from parties in our street, What’s left of my wedding suit the moths didn’t eat.
These fabrics make our sails, The match of any storm to come, Weaving plaids that span The wide Firths and narrow Sounds, The Skerries and Deeps. Sails that lift our peerie boat over white-lipped waves To the gentle water of our older age.
One new year’s eve, while walking the Fife coastal path, we came across a cave. On the cave wall was a beautiful mural of the heavens. Under it there were two names and two dates, presumably marking the beginning and the end of their relationship. And next to this were the words ‘nothing lasts, but nothing is lost’. These words would not let me be, and made their way into a song about the love we give to people who are struggling to make sense of terrible events. Crossing the Minch appears in the final verse as an idea of travelling to a safer place. This idea also appears in the song ‘The Mingulay Boat Song’ and is referenced in the fiddle tune ‘Crossing the Minch’. Anna Ling is on guitar and backing vocals.
Richard Thompson has a back catalogue of wondrous songs and among the finest must be Beeswing. The song is inspired by Anne Briggs, a Nottingham-born folk singer who retreated from the the limelight, apparently uninterested in anything resembling fame in the folk world. In my response to Beeswing, with Anna Ling on guitar and backing vocals, I try to give the main character her own voice. In my song, a strong woman sits with her wolfhound at her feet and reflects on what Richard Thompson writes:
She was a rare thing Fine as a beeswing So fine a breath of wind might blow her away She was a lost child She was running wild, she said As long as there’s no price on love, I’ll stay And you wouldn’t want me any other way
Kayaköy is just south of Fethiye in south west Turkey. Ro and I walked there with friends in 2024 and the photo (with thanks to Roger Giddings) below shows me, shielded from the bleaching sun, at the start of the Lycian Way (which passes by Kayakoy).
One hundred years earlier, in 1923 the community of Greek orthodox Christians who lived there were driven out and sent to Greece as part of a high-level deal between the politicians of Greece and the newly formed Turkish state (with British connivance). This was despite the fact that Greek orthodox Christians and Turkish Muslims had lived more or less happily together for centuries. When they left, the ‘Greeks’ handed their keys to their Turkish neighbours for safe-keeping until they returned. Their neighbours respected this trust and waited for their return. At this time, millions were moved from Greece and Turkey to satisfy a misplaced sense of national identity in a disgraceful episode that deserves more exposure to our scorn. But we should also remember that this is an episode with echoes throughout modern history. We visited the ruins for a second time in the company of our Turkish friend Kerim. The ‘Greeks’ called this place Leivissi.
One final thought; after I had finished writing this poem, I met with a Turkish colleague and asked him about the relationship between young people from Turkey and Greece today. He told me they are like the cousins at a party playing happily together in the garden but aware that their parents indoors have had a terrible row.
Roofs fall in on broken walls Making refuges for sparrows, jays, and orioles. Where children once sang, ravens call.
Hope lived here long after violent exile Left tables upturned and rotting fruit on trees. The simple hope that good people Would soon return to greet good people, Died in this haunted place. One hundred years of separation Suffocated that hope under masonry and memories, Under bones and feathers, And crumpled cans of Coca-Cola.
In bleaching sunlight, travellers stare To where families were taken blinking from their homes, And marched for weeks, either to a strangers’ land, Or else a roadside grave. They were marched because papers from an unknown hand Declared that they were Greeks. They carried with them what they could not bear to leave; Perhaps new shoes just bought from town, Or a dead child’s christening gown. They marched because decrees, When signed and stamped, Give permits to our pernicious selves, And passports to our moral poverty.
But we are all Greek, We all fail our neighbours in their time of need. We all die by the road in unmarked graves, And still our stubby fingers will not let go the pen That signed the forms that smeared our roads with blood.
The exiled Greeks were builders; They knew where to place the keystones And how stones rise to make walls, How roofs defy gravity. They knew where our foundations lie.
One day we will all be exiles, From this place or this life. Until then we can sign the papers, We can orchestrate an exodus, We can look on like travellers blinking in the sun. Or, we can sing with the sparrows and the jays, Dress in the colours of the oriole, Dance with the ravens, And be builders.
The Atlantic Way is the network of roads down the west coast of Ireland. Rowena and I were staying in Toberpatrick Cottage near Sligo, which is not far from the Atlantic Way. Each evening I was re-reading Yeats (who was buried in Sligo) and reflecting on his Ireland. This made me think that the tourists’ Atlantic Way may not be all there is to see. Yeats increasingly stamps his images on the poem as it progresses. Should you like to know, I’m not sure what, in the final line, we are retreating from. With thanks to Katherine Zesserson for letting us stay in her lovely cottage.
Far out in the Atlantic, A force spins and weaves from mists and fog A cloth that is spread across your grey streets, Your gardens, and neighbours’ cars. Embroidered on it, the face of Maeve ‘One who intoxicates’, the warrior queen Who was buried upright on Knocknarea the better to face Forever with fury her enemies from hungry Donegal. Alongside Maeve, see the corvid Morrigan. She takes the napes of enemies’ necks – Their tender goldfinch beauty – In her crow-like beak. She smashes skulls And breaks backs and vertebrae To gorge on their rich marrow; Collagen for her cheeks and lips. Their stories are not fiddle-de-dee Irish tales Making straplines for tourist brochures.
This is an Atlantic way Far from the Hymers and caravans, The convenience stores Selling soda bread And medicated lamb feed Wagging tails to market. Here, love hides her face amid a crowd of stars And lonely Leda conceives a cataclysm.
Knowing this Atlantic way, Call up Yeats from his Sligo cemetery. Ask him only for the cloths of heaven And take his tattered textiles – His texts and stiles, His myths and truths – And lay them beneath our feet To soften our way With scattered remnants, mapping our retreat.
I find that travel sharpens how we see. And what we see may or may not be what is there. But for me, this really happened.
On 5th Avenue, at the end of a New York week without much joy, I walked behind a couple in their eighties. He walked with difficulty, she rode her mobility scooter. He, seeing a fallen leaf, slowly bent over And picked it from the pavement. She smiled and laughed as he placed the leaf in her hand.
And I saw, I saw How sixty years ago on this very Avenue A young man with the figure of a dancer Had reached his left hand into the air And brought back an autumn leaf for a beautiful woman. Her dark eyes shone, and her lips parted As he placed it in her hand. ‘Here’, he said, ‘this will bring us luck’. And it did, it did.
A group of artists were creating sketches of an ancient elm in the corner of Washington Square, New York, and asked me to join them. I explained I was better with words than images, but suggested I could write the tree a poem. Here it is – more or less as performed in Washington Square to a kindly and slightly bemused group of artists.
The Lenape people had a name for this marshy land But the sounds you first heard were from a different tongue – Commands in English, ordering trees like soldiers on parade; Sedimenting gridlines, still shaping how New York is planned.
At first you stood above the buildings, Until sky-scraping neighbours blocked your sun. However high you grew, concrete made the sky dark And you were cornered here in this palisaded park.
New Yorkers leant against your bark, Sharing Dutch and English and Russian and Yiddish, Spanish and German, Chinese and French, And more, and more, until Babel took shape around your heartwood.
Still today you endure Chattering shoppers, artists, children and scholars. As I write, a honky-tonk piano, Plays by the fountain for Sunday dollars.
But did you shudder when the Twin Towers fell, Or when a slave’s neck cracked, hung beneath your branches, Did you wonder at our broken roots? On this chill-bright autumn day, While mycelium links you to every tree From the Harlem River to the Battery I too have formed connections, Although less consequential. I sit and write at a table as cold-fingered artists toil. Our friendly words drop contentedly like falling leaves On Manhattan’s rich and troubled soil.
This song was encouraged by the writing or Rainer Maria Rilke and you may pick up echoes of his writing in the lyrics. We all spend time in the dark hours of our being – more or less comfortably. And many of us have carelessly lost love, which is what this song is about. Anna Ling is providing beautiful backing vocals and guitar. I have added some mandolin.
Between the sorrow and the songs
Tom Ling with lines from Rainer Maria Rilke (The book of hours)
Every time you left A part of me went with you Words that once had meaning Have turned to ashes in our mouths
Chorus We were lost between The sorrows and the songs In dark hours of our being Where love lost carelessly belongs
If words are the currency of love But we've both ran out of credit Words are worth what they will fetch We were trading in unpaid debts
Among the sorrows and the songs But in words so soft, so subdued, Our love will always linger Where dark hours can’t intrude
This is a song for someone I never met. Scott Hutchison played in the great Scottish band Frightened Rabbit and my song is a response to their song ‘Swim until you can’t see land’. It may be about having the courage to be the person you were meant to be. Anna Ling on guitar and backing vocals.
(For Scott Hutchison, of Frightened Rabbit, and their song ‘Swim until you can’t see land’)
Swim until you can't see land Are you a man? Are you a bag of sand?
Chorus G Bm Em F# Lie back the sea will hold you Bm Em Am D7 And in the end the cold will warm you G Bm Em F# The deep lift you up, waves smooth your way Am F C G Lie gently back in the calm of the day
Verses C Em F G7 When you swim you can always look back to land F C F G To familiar faces and firm ground C Em F G If you want you can keep both your feet on the sand F Fm C G Or let tides decide where you are bound
Don’t catalogue birds, let each choose their own name They will fly in their own way just the same Don’t measure yourself by the distance from land Or count your worth in bags of sand.
Now lie gently back in the arms of the ocean Watch the sun dancing, mirrored on waves Let the salt clear your eyes until you can see Who you are and who you will be
This is a tune written for a dear and long-standing friend. The first part should be played on its own for the first time through, and then the harmony line added before bringing in the third section for the final time through. Anna Ling on guitar.
