Shadow Running
10,000 miles
from the chasm that opened at our feet
I keep
running
(Beauty
lies in every soul said a toothless old beggar
& the
words pursue me)
Unreachable
sun, a sea so full, so vast
Unbearably
forever
(Beauty
lies in every)
Lush rainforest,
light which roars
Air
thick&wet, one million insects hum
How far must
I go to
Forget what
I’ve done?
(Beauty
lies in)
Adelaide
River, muddy&secret, saltwater crocs
Raise ridged
heads, a sense of being hunted
(Beauty
lies)
Indian
Ocean, 60 miles in, eerie silence of a dive
Cage, great
whites advance out of the foggy blue
(Beauty)
Eternal
Outback, sizzling rocks, red everything
Landscapes
that shimmer: nothing in each direction
How far must
I go to
Come undone?
Ayer Rock -- Eric Stewart
Future Islands is an American synthpop band composed of Gerrit Welmers, William Cashion, and Samuel T. Herring, who also seres as lyricist. As art students at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, they first formed as Art Lord & the Self-Portraits before regrouping as Future Islands. As Cashion explained, "The name is meant to be vague.... We were either gonna be called Already Islands or Future Shoes. Because, seriously, you don't know what future shoes look like, but you know you'd want a pair! (you know?). So after deciding Already Shoes was a bad name, we combined them to Future Islands." One of their songs was "A Dream Of You And Me":
ReplyDeleteI wrestled by the sea
A loneliness in me
I asked myself for peace
And found it at my feet
Staring at the sea...
All that glitters is gold
Don't believe what you've been told
People lie, people love, people go
But beauty lies in every soul
I wrestled by the sea
A dream of you and me
I let it go from me
It washed up at my feet
Staring at the sea...
All that glitters is gold
Don't believe what you've been told
People lie, people love, people go
But beauty lies in every soul
If you wait, if you wait for the morning
If you wait, if you wait for the morning
If you wait, if you wait for the morning
If you wait, if you wait for the morning
How long, how long
How long, how long
I asked myself for peace
I asked myself for peace
I asked myself for peace
I asked myself for peace
I asked myself for peace
And found a piece of me
Staring at the sea...
Uluru / Ayers Rock is a large arkose sandstone inselberg ("island mountain"), a prominent isolated residual formation that rises abruptly from a flat erosion lowland, in the Outback of Australia's Northern Territory, 335 km (208 mi) southwest of Alice Springs, It is 348 m (1,142 ft) high and has a circumference of 9.4 km (5.8 mi). It was given its English name in 1873 by Australian Overland Telegraph surveyor William Gosse, in honor of the outgoing chief secretary Henry Ayers of South Australia, who had emigrated to the continent as a carpenter before becoming rich directing the Burra Burra copper mines, the "Monster Mine" that secured the wealth of the colony of South Australia, and going into politics. The formation is sacred to the local aboriginal tribe, the Pitjantjatjara Anangu, who claim that creator beings, in the forms of people, plants, and animals, shaped the landscape; their spirits still inhanit the land. A number of accounts describe the origin of Uluru, including as the result of warring serpent beings, or two boys who played in the mud after a rain, or two tribes of ancestral spirits who were invited to a feast but failed to show up after being distracted by the Sleepy Lizard Women, and the leaders of both tribes did in the war that followed, causing the earth to rise up in grief at the bloodshed.
The Adelaide is a river in the Northern Territory which is noted for its high concentration of saltwater crocodiles. It was discovered by members of the "HMS Beagle" voyage in 1839 and named after Adelheid of Saxe-Meiningen, the wife of king William IV. Though Charles Darwin was no longer a member of the expedition, the discovery of a new fine-grained sandstone at the place which would eventually be the capital of the Northern Territory reminded captain John Clements Wickham of his former shipmate's "geologising," causing him to name it Port Darwin.
The great white (Carcharodon carcharias, also called the white death), is a large lamniform shark which can be found in the coastal surface waters of all the major oceans. Mature females may be 6.1 m (20 ft) long and weigh 1,950 kg (4,300 lb); males are considerably smaller. They can reach speeds of 56 km/h (35 mph) for short bursts and may live 70 years or more, though females cannot produce offspring until they are 33.
ReplyDeleteIn a note, Stephen wrote: "You were right on the ball with that song--it inspired the poem. What the beggar actually said, in a small fishing village on the south coast of Australia, was perhaps even more haunting: 'There is beauty in us all.'"