A friend just sent me this link to Denis Kevans, 1939-2005 (“Australia’s Poet Lorikeet”!) reciting his work : “Ah White Man, Have You Any Sacred Sites?”(I thought maybe Stewie had posted that last year????), but this link also included his poem “Mend the Torn Air“ set to music by Denis Rice, and which was new to me :
MEND THE TORN AIR
Denis Kevans
Your beak is the needle, The thread is your song, And you mend the torn air, When the madness is gone, And the harmonies old, of the bushland unfold, When you mend the torn air with your song.
And when harmony reigned In the forest of green, And no screaming steel Desecrated the scene, All the birds of the air made the harmony there, And they threaded the air with their song.
Now they tear down the trees, And a nightmare it seems, The timeless old forest And the screaming machines, But you with your song, you follow along, And you mend the torn air with your song.
When the screaming of shells And the big guns did roar, The larks, with their song, Tried to even the score, They near burst their hearts, in singing their parts, And they mended the air with their song.
So your beak is the needle, The thread is your song, To mend the torn air, When the madness is gone, Like the larks in the war Who have done it before, You mend the torn air with your song.
(lyrics cut-and-pasted from KV’s Comment on webpage)