1. |
The Floating Boy (Live)
06:48
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('The Floating Boy', Max Thomas)
Astronauts and firemen,
He picks at dreams and plays.
Ageing steals his oxygen,
Until his dreams turn grey.
Smooth skin with a bubbling grin,
He sleeps to father’s voice.
Shaving scabs and drunk kebabs,
A booming, looming choice.
A woodland path that moves so fast,
The trees grow as he floats.
Floating on, trees bar the past,
A bubble blocks his throat.
Tumbling through the leaves he grasps
and desperately clings.
The lack of air it makes him gasp,
If only he had wings.
The branches slowly drag him down,
Until his feet are stuck on ground.
A poem of a boy began,
Blink for too long, the boy’s a man.
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2. |
A Girl (Live)
06:12
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('A Girl', Michael Field)
A Girl,
Her soul a deep-wave pearl
Dim, lucent of all lovely mysteries;
A face flowered for heart’s ease,
A brow’s grace soft as seas
Seen through faint forest-trees:
A mouth, the lips apart,
Like aspen-leaflets trembling in the breeze
From her tempestuous heart.
Such: and our souls so knit,
I leave a page half-writ —
The work begun
Will be to heaven’s conception done,
If she come to it.
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3. |
Last Hope (Live)
06:01
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('Last Hope', Paul Verlaine, trans. Norman R. Shapiro)
Beside a humble stone, a tree
Floats in the cemetery’s air,
Not planted in memoriam there,
But growing wild, uncultured, free.
A bird comes perching there to sing,
Winter and summer, proffering
Its faithful song—sad, bittersweet.
That tree, that bird are you and I:
You, memory; absence, me, that tide
And time record. Ah, by your side
To live again, undying! Aye,
To live again! But ma petite,
Now nothingness, cold, owns my flesh. . .
Will your love keep my memory fresh?
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4. |
My Triumph
08:31
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('My Triumph', John Greenleaf Whittier)
The autumn-time has come;
On woods that dream of bloom,
And over purpling vines,
The low sun fainter shines.
The aster-flower is failing,
The hazel’s gold is paling;
Yet overhead more near
The eternal stars appear!
O living friends who love me!
O dear ones gone above me!
Careless of other fame,
I leave to you my name.
Hide it from idle praises,
Save it from evil phrases:
Why, when dear lips that spake it
Are dumb, should strangers wake it?
Let the thick curtain fall;
I better know than all
How little I have gained,
How vast the unattained.
Others shall sing the song,
Others shall right the wrong,—
Finish what I begin,
And all I fail of win.
What matter, I or they?
Mine or another’s day,
So the right word be said
And life the sweeter made?
Overhead more near
The eternal stars appear!
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Harry Baker London, UK
Harry Baker is an award-winning improvising pianist and composer active in jazz, classical and new-music
settings.
His music has been featured on Jazz FM and BBC Radio 3 with Sheku Kanneh-Mason, and his compositions recorded by the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain on NMC Recordings.
(Photo by Emma Werner)
... more
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