Issue #173 / November 2021
Have you been resting up since the tour? If not what have you been doing, except sitting around watching TV with Susie?
KELLY, LEEDS, UK
Can you send us any new writing?
IAIN, CARDIFF, UK
Dear Kelly and Iain,
Mostly I have been spending time in the studio working on my ceramic figurines. This is a great pleasure for me as the project slowly inches towards completion.
I have also just finished a recording called Seven Psalms. It is spoken word, essentially, set to very beautiful music, if I may say so myself. Each psalm is made up of three four-line verses and addresses a different spiritual concern — joy, guilt, evil, adulation etc. The seven are recorded as one long piece. Not for everyone, to be sure, but a lovely thing all the same. I’m not sure what I will do with it, or when it will be released, but, Iain, here is Psalm Six.
Such Things Should Never Happen
Such things should never happen but we die
The swallow finds an oak to nest her young
Defenceless between the earth and the sky
Uncounted beneath a vast, indifferent sun
A mother holds her baby to her breast
She trusts in you yet does not dare to breathe
As the baby swallow falls from its nest
As the mighty oak does not appear to see
Such things should never happen but they do
In a darkened room, a mother cries
The swallow seeks to build its nest anew
The oak tree lifts its branches to its eyes
Love, Nick