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| Downloads & Listens: 1693
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| Description | | Vocal music, guitar solos and a few first attempts at multivocal recordings |
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| Information for song "The Hebrew Class" | | | | |  | Music written in 1987, for Carol Rumens, who wrote the poem (published by Bloodaxe books). Performed specially for a poetry recital in London.
The music to this poem has also been arranged as a duet called Pax Eiscum for flute and guitar. It is performed by the Serenade duo here |  Play
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| | Song Lyrics | Dark night of the year,
the clinging ice a blue-pavement Dresden,
smoking still,
and in lands more deeply frozen,
the savage thaw of tanks.
But in the Hebrew class it is warm as childhood,
It is Cheder,
It is Sunday school.
it is the golden honey of approval,
the slow grainy tear,
saved for the bread of a child,
newly broken on the barbs of his Aleph-Bet.
To show him that knowledge is sweet,
and obedience by the same token.
So we taste power and pleasing,
and the white chalk lisps on the board,
milky as our first words,
we try to shine for our leader.
How almost perfectly human,
this little circle of bright heads,
bowed before the declaration of grammatical law,
Who could divide our nation of study?
Not even God!
We are blank pages, hungry for the pen.
We are ploughed fields, soft and ripe for planting.
What music rises and falls as we softly read?
Oh smiling children,
oh dangerously gifted ones,
Take care that you learn to ask "Why?"
For the room you are in is also history.
Consider your sweet compliance in the light of the day,
when the book is torn from your hands,
When, to answer your teacher`s commands,
You must speak for this ice.
this dark.
© Carol Rumens` Poems 1968-2004 (Bloodaxe Books, 2004)
| | Song Statistics | | Song Serial Number: | | 413 | | Date of first upload: | | Friday February 9th, 2007 | | Date of last update: | | Friday February 9th, 2007 | | Total downloads and listens: | | 38 | | Total amount sold: | | $0.00 |
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