Songs For Seamus Heaney
Yesterday I was very privileged to play the On Home Ground festival in Magherafelt in honour of Noble Prize winning poet Seamus Heaney who some of you may already know was an inspiration to me and who sadly passed away last year. I may write some more on the festival soon but for now i’d like to post the lyrics i wrote for the 5 new songs i played at the event in honour of the great Northern Irish poet. The songs are not directly inspired by specific poems nor are they my attempts to meet his brilliance rather they are inspired by his main inspirations namely Ireland, nature and family. He once was asked how he started to write and he answered that inspiration usually came from a sliver of memory. So i did the same for these songs. Any tiny spark of memory of my childhood in Ireland I would let guide me. There are songs, like The Church, about my grandmother’s (who is still the most extraordinary person I have ever known) death, and a song about the time my dad and I were shot by an idiot shooting at a low-flying duck (It’s A Day Like That), i was six at the time, and there are songs about Ireland north south east and west (I Think Of Home & I Still Love You). They are of course not touched with the same divine genius of Seamus Heaney but I humbly over them to his memory, to his fans, to our fans and to his wonderful family and extended family many of whom i met last night. It was a pleasure. Last night meant the world to me to say thank you to Mr Heaney for everything he gave me in life for it wasn’t until I read him that i started writing in the first place. Everything from me over the last twenty years starts with him.
And you’re right, songs don’t tend to make much sound without music. Until we decide which, if any, of these we are to record for the next Snow Patrol album they can just sit here quietly and behave. Or not behave. In honour of Heaney, a writer of such immense passion, i hope the latter.
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I Think Of Home
-
I remember trips to belfast
On that train that hugs the coast
The fields turned quickly into golf course
The golf course just as fast to fields
It was a callow boast I’ll grant you
To know it all when we knew none
Those days we walked the streets of belfast
Like our kingdom come had come
-
I think of home I often do
You gotta know I love you now
In this light how could I not
I think of us just silly kids
Bet we thought we’d never age
And if we did we’d never dare say
-
And I remember trips to derry
On the old car’s freezing seats
And I know fountain street in winter
My grandma’s laugh the greatest noise
It’s sure been harder since she left us
And none of us have been the same
But the light she left is endless
And I still see her every day
-
I think of home….
-
I remember trips through ireland
One caravan, two dogs, the sky
My father yelling points of interest
Us snotty kids just rolled our eyes
The punched out teeth of irish history
Mistakes were made let’s leave it there
There one’s thing we can all agree on
There’s beauty north, south, east and west
-
I think of home….
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The Church
-
If silence is golden
Those days were a golden age
Just you and your bible
Open at your last page
And those words trembled from me
As I read in the church that day
With so many family
All lost for the words to say
-
Why right then
When I was so far from home
No goodbyes
Just an earthquake of words through a phone
To this day
I hear your voice all the time in mind
I know you’re here
Somehow still guiding me
-
If you’re not the tiger
You’re likely the tiger’s prey
When too many thought that
You thought a different way
In an Ireland so broken
Of heart and of blood and bone
You were a light ray
So rare yet you weren’t alone
-
Why right then
When I was so far from home
No goodbyes
Just an earthquake of words through a phone
To this day
I hear your voice all the time in mind
I know you’re here
Somehow still guiding me
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Like Golden Waves
-
It’s not the smell of the regal pine
It’s not the humming of the bees
It’s the depth of my father’s laugh
That takes me back
-
And through the eyes of some childhood daze
I see our garden as it was
There was more colour in those days I’m sure
But I’m not sure why
-
And the swings are rusted out by now
But freshly painted they were then
And I remember trying to loop the loop
Of course I never did
-
Here I come like some guileless lamb
Chasing footballs in the grass
Likely dreaming playing windsor park
Although I still do
-
The sunsets fell then like golden waves
But maybe that was all a dream
Those weren’t the end of the days of god
Cause god is always in the trees
-
I’m just a boy maybe five or six
I wanted only what I knew
It was a simple little kingdom then
Or so I thought
-
Cause in the streets not so far from here
There are boys around my age
And they’re alive in a dangerous land
That I don’t know yet
-
The sunsets fell then like golden waves
But maybe that was all a dream
Those weren’t the end of the days of god
Cause god is always in the trees
———————————————
It’s A Day Like That
-
The pheasants hung in silence
And I remember feeling sad
Because the last time that I saw them they were flying
-
My father took me with him
It was ours and ours alone
Standing waist to water before sunrise
-
The smell of wax-proof jacket
Turned acrid in the rain
And every time I smell it now I think of then
-
The stunning smack of buckshot
Then thump, then blood, then shock
My father calming me with gentle mighty hands
-
It’s days like that you don’t know what hit you
It’s days like that you’re not sure who you are
But it’s days like that you know you’re not alone
And it’s days like that you know how much you’re loved
-
Some thirty odd years later
In the Ulster hospital
You put those gentle hands of yours in mine again
-
But this time not so mighty
Maybe this time cause you need to
And we connect the dots from child to man to child
-
It’s days like these you don’t know what hit you
It’s days like these you’re not sure who you are
But it’s days like these you know you’re not alone
And it’s days like these you know how much you’re loved
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I Still Love You
-
I stepped still shaking from the slowing train
Out onto streets that used to know my name
Felt you in every single breath that I took that day
-
Though it’s been years it feels no time at all
And etched and echoed in these city’s walls
Is each and every word of cruelty and joy we ever said
-
But I still love you
I still love you
-
Hard to believe in something you can’t hold
No matter how it hurts or what your told
The rose is beautiful but it can also draw your blood
-
Two crows perch close like they are man and wife
So tendered feathered it looked the sweetest life
So now I know for sure that there is love on this side of town
-
And I still love you
I still love you
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gL x
