words

1 Butterfly’s Wing (Jacqui Dankworth)

Details of our lives seem so unimportant

But the sum of our parts becomes the whole

One kind word and miracles happen

One sweet touch revives the soul.

Many single voices become a choir

Many raindrops become a cloud,

Live your life with passion as it awaits you

‘cos there are no pockets in a shroud.

A thought a deed and every kiss

A word and each courageous hand

A taste, a smell, a stone or a pebble

A rock, and every grain of sand

A shock, a stab, a lover's sigh

An acquiescence and every sad goodbye

A bluebell, a star and every song sung

A lie, every longing and every promise undone..

These things are like the ripple of a butterfly's wing

Just like the ripple of a butterfly's wing

A pulse, a breath, and the beating of every heart

We are woven together with golden thread (no drifting apart)

And if I love, I love you all

And if you cry, I feel your pain

When I laugh, you live, and when you dance you fly

I feel you move on the wind

Like the ripple of a butterfly's wing

Just like the ripple of a butterfly's wing …

2 Angel Face (Duncan Lamont)

I like your style

admire your style

just love that angel face

I like your walk

the way you talk

but love that angel face

I love your eyes

I'm hypnotised

but they take second place

I hope you'll be

a part of me

then I can see that angel face

3 Bear Song (David Gordon)

I wandered down into the woods today

There was a bear who wanted me to play

My little piano tune that I composed in June which celebrates the month of May.

The he-bear started then to sing along

Soon it became a rather different song

Which told of all his cares, of late lamented bears and of injustices and wrongs:

"Why do we trample on everybody else's business?

Have we not ample? Can we not concentrate on is-ness?”

And then the bear he sat and wept a while

But with a sideways look began to smile

Leapt up and offered me the chance to dance

A step he'd learnt in France, boy, did that he-bear have some style.

The bear has gone, and left me all alone

But told me I could reach him on the phone

I haven't tried to ring as I'd prefer to sing my song but on another tone.

So what's the moral of this peculiar little story?

That we shouldn't quarrel when everything is hunky-dory?

The bear, the woods, the song were all a ruse

With which my tune the better to enthuse you,

Can't relax until I've penned the end

Your time I'll no more spend but go and choose another muse.

4 Le Départ (Virginie Guiffray)

Le départ

laisser derrière soi

des journées

de lumière douce

un vent qui rend fou

le lac, les pins, les maisons claires.

S'arrêter

avant le voyage,

en suspend,

notre présent,

le temps qui s'étire,

les rêves, espoirs,

Une vie nouvelle.

Le bonheur ressemble

au soleil sur les dalles blanches,

À l'eau de mer dans le creux de ta main.

Le bonheur ressemble

au ciel pur d'hiver

à la nuit profonde, profonde et parfumée

Continuer,

reprendre le chemin,

l'existence

poursuit son cours,

son jeu

qui surprend

en nous, le lac,

une vie nouvelle

une vie nouvelle…

5 The Bridge (David Gordon)

Now place your bids

Before we start:

The 3 of clubs

The Queen of Hearts,

It's just a game,

A game for two,

So let's dance.

The Clifton Bridge

Is in suspense

The bridge's toll –

Just a few pence,

Pont d'Avignon,

A bridge too far?

Not a chance.

Building bridges up in the sky,

Where Earth and Air make love up on high,

Looks of joy and tears and cries and sighs,

Make the everyday story of finding love on a bridge.

The Bridge of Sighs

The Menai Strait

The River Kwai

The Golden Gate

Though very grand

They're built on sand

No man's land

A last embrace

A 'you I'll miss'

A backward glance

A parting kiss

This is no game

When will we walk

Hand in Hand?

Building bridges up in the sky …

6 Just a Song (Charlie Wood)

Meandering

Malingering

The leaves are scattered on the pavement

They are beautiful and brave

The bed is made

The table’s laid

I know it’s much too late

To celebrate the silly games we played

It’s just a song to pass the time

It’s just a rhythm and a rhyme

It’s a just a song –

still I know we must be strong,

And say all our sad goodbyes.

An airplane’s trail, a silver tail,

I watch it slide across the sky like some supersonic snail.

The path is clear, sure and sincere

Are all your eggs in just one basket or should I not even ask?

There are those who would say life’s a play, cabaret.

Whirlybird, hurdy-gurdy, a gay carousel, say ‘fare thee well’.

It’s just a song to pass the time

It’s just a rhythm and a rhyme

It’s a just a song, tell me would it be so wrong

If you learned to sing along?

It’s just a song

Won’t you sing along with me?

It’s just a song.

7 There Was a Mad Man (anon)

There was a Mad Man, and he had a Mad Wife,

And they lived in a Mad town,

They had three children all at a birth,

And they were Mad every One Every One

The Father was Mad, The Mother was Mad

The Children all Mad besides;

And they all got Upon a Mad Mad Horse,

And Madly they did ride

They rode by night and they rode by day

Yet never never a one of them fell;

They rode so Madly all the way

Till they came to the gates of hell

Old Nick was glad to see them so Mad,

And gladly let them in:

But he soon grew sorry to see him so merry,

And let them out again.

8 To Marie (John Bennett)

When the breeze from the bluebottle's blustering blim

Twirls the toads in a tooroomaloo,

And the whiskery whine of the wheedlesome whim

Drowns the roll of the rattatatoo,

Then I dream in the shade of the shally-go-shee,

And the voice of the bally-molay

Brings the smell of the pale poppy-cod's blummered blee

From the willy-wad over the way.

Ah, the shuddering shoe and the blinketty-blanks

When the punglung falls from the bough

In the blast of a hurricane's hicketty-hanks

O'er the hills of the hocketty-how!

Give the rigamarole to the clangery-whang

If they care for such fiddlededee;

But the thingumbob kiss of the whangery-bang

Keeps the higgledy-piggle for me.

9 Das Knie/The Knee (Christian Morgenstern)

Ein Knie geht einsam durch die Welt.

Es ist kein Baum! Es ist kein Zelt!

Es ist ein Knie, sonst nichts.

A knee bestrides the earth alone,

It is a knee that's all!

It is no tree! It is no stone!

It is a knee, that's all.

Im Kriege ward einmal ein Mann

erschossen um und um.

Das Knie allein blieb unverletzt -

als wär's ein Heiligtum.

A soldier in a war was shot

Right, left and all around.

The knee remained, of all the lot,

Miraculously sound.

And now it strides the earth alone.

Es ist ein Knie, sonst nichts.

Es ist kein Baum, es ist kein Zelt.

Es ist ein Knie, sonst nichts.

10 The Alchemist And The Catflap (Jacqui Dankworth)

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11 Poem On a Rainy Day (Jacqui Dankworth)

The seat was worn and so was she,

Her friend, a bench, for company.

The leaves were still and the wind was cold,

The night was young but the days grew old.

She sat and slept and waited for spring,

Waited in silence for the skylark to sing.

But all she heard was a one-way sound

Of a one-way ticket on the underground.

Though the summer came and the river flowed

Time could not repay the debt it owed

Her body felt torn it was ripped apart

By the constant aching of a broken heart.

The sun it shone and music made sound

Where she knew she had lost the love she had found

The music made sound and the sun it shone

Into a dark, dark, place where love had never gone.

For there's no easy path for the long road ahead

Just a bench, in the wind, and silent tears to be shed.