The Second Fork — the album

Songs from the book by James Laird · 8 songs · 26 min · listen free

1. Someone Is Keeping the Time

   The chart hangs over the hearth
   Where it's hung two hundred years
   I don't see it any more
   The way you don't see the door
   Only some mornings the light comes slant
   And the star-metal wakes and gleams
   And I remember what I keep
   And who it was for

   Down the river the lamps go out
   All at once, a clean dark line
   Nobody guttering, nobody late
   The tables say it's morning, so it's morning
   A child can read at midnight now
   Nobody's carried through the dark
   And I stand in my door with my cup going cold
   And I watch the valley go out in order

   Someone is keeping the time for us
   And it isn't the keepers
   Someone is keeping the time for us
   And I don't know who

   Nine children wait at the standing-stone
   The tallest one with his foot on it
   Why do we still do the Readiness?
   Twelve sacks of seed for a ship that isn't there
   I tell him the ice always comes
   I watch him hear it as a lesson
   And then across the gold from the north
   I hear the hull begin to hum

   Someone is keeping the time for us
   And it isn't the keepers
   Someone is keeping the time for us
   And I don't know who

   It said Cody
   It said Susan
   I can't find the door

   Someone is keeping the time
   Take me to the ship

2. What It Will Cost

   Forty tired farmers on the bales
   Breath smoking in the lantern-light
   They came for the free bread, I know it
   I begged four sacks off the guild yesterday
   Old Dov said, boy, they all begin the same
   A new idea, a wonderful thing
   But not one of them had the guts to stand up
   And tell you what it'll bring

   So I've got a cell the size of a plum
   Burnt black like a stone from the fruit
   Touch it to a wire and the glass gives light
   And that's the truth

   I want to say what it will cost
   I want to say it first
   It'll cost the guild, it'll cost a year
   It'll cost a night of waiting here
   And what else, I swear I don't know
   But it's a gift and it was left for us
   And it's a shame to leave it in the dark

   A woman at the front said, is that all?
   I said that's all I've got
   She said I never heard a man sell me a thing
   By telling me what's wrong with it, and the barn
   Laughed so hard the lanterns shook
   And I went red to the roots of my hair
   And a nurse in a grey cloak at the back
   Wasn't laughing, she was standing there

   You are a very bad liar
   I'm not lying
   I know, that's what I mean
   Somebody's got to stand beside you
   And make sure you never stop asking

   I want to say what it will cost
   I want to say it first
   It'll cost the guild, it'll cost a year
   It'll cost a night of waiting here
   And what else, I swear I don't know
   But it's a gift and it was left for us
   And it's a shame to leave it in the dark

   These cells are not a gift, they're a loan
   Draw slowly
   Read it again

3. Two Thousand Three Hundred and Fourteen

   They say I stood at the wall from sunup
   They say I knelt on the stone and slept
   They say my mouth said words I never learned
   I don't remember a single step
   Somebody walked me up that hill
   Somebody used these legs
   Somebody spoke with my own mouth
   And never asked

   One, two, three
   I'll walk it down myself
   One, two, three
   Every step is mine
   Nobody carries me
   Nobody walks me now
   Two thousand three hundred and fourteen
   From the end of the quay to my own blue door

   They sent a cart, a boy, a good horse
   Hale said give her whatever she wants
   I said tell him I'm grateful, tell him I'm walking
   Twenty years I've carried cells
   Two to a basket, forty a day
   Never once been carried anywhere
   And I'll not start being carried now
   By anything on earth or in the stone

   One, two, three
   I'll walk it down myself
   One, two, three
   Every step is mine
   Nobody carries me
   Nobody walks me now
   Two thousand three hundred and fourteen
   From the end of the quay to my own blue door

   I'm not a horse
   Ask me and I'll carry anything
   I'm not a horse
   It was the not being asked

   Chalk from the ledge where I mark the baskets
   Square on the lintel so the road can read
   What's that, then, says the youngest of the gang
   Mine, I say, and I go in
   And in the morning at the river-house
   Bask has had his boots on for an hour
   Gang's at the hull at seven
   Yours are yours, come and count them

   One
   Two
   Three

4. How Do We Not

   Three thousand people in the fallen leaves
   Gold under the seven trees
   And a man in a funeral coat says let's be afraid together
   And everybody nods, and I'm on the broken wall
   With my hands around my knees
   And I don't mean any harm
   But the question's in my mouth before I know

   If there's a thing under the Hill
   And it could help us, and it's only a door
   And we've been so afraid two hundred years

   How do we not?
   How do we not open it?
   Everybody's turning round to look at me
   How do we not?
   When it's only a door
   And we're standing in front of it

   I went scarlet to the roots of my hair
   I said it twice and I meant it twice
   And the Speaker said it's a very old question, child
   And a very good one too
   They left us no answer, she said
   They only left us time
   And they're at the Hill right now, forty of them
   Standing at the stone

   And it's good, somebody's saying, oh it's good
   The first thing all day not about being afraid
   How many, says the man, I'd like to know how many

   How do we not?
   How do we not open it?
   Everybody's turning round to look at me
   How do we not?
   When it's only a door
   And we're standing in front of it

   Nobody answered
   Not the Council, not the keeper
   Not the man with the lamp
   Not the thing in the river
   It only showed us what it was
   And left the asking to us

   How do we not?
   How do we not open it?
   Everybody's turning round to look at me
   How do we not?
   When it's only a door
   And we're standing in front of it

   How do we not

5. It's Dark, There's a Child

   The Concern's lamps on the scaffold
   Hard and cold and steady as noon
   A boy of twelve at my elbow
   A tin lamp under his coat
   I don't know how to sing it
   I thought there'd be a knowing
   There's only one note
   The opposite of the one that opened it

   I made a vow over a dead woman
   No one will die in the dark again
   Thirty years I've kept it
   And you ask me to put out the lamps
   Do you know what she'd have said?
   I didn't go into the dark to end it
   I went because it was dark
   And there was a child

   Go the other way
   One note, held low
   Hold it like a rope
   Somebody dropped
   It's dark
   There's a child
   Let it go still
   Not die, only still

   Let her sing, says the voice in the box
   I was never once wrong and glad of it
   Let her sing
   And far off, calm, in the cloth
   A woman's voice says: now

   Go the other way
   One note, held low
   Hold it like a rope
   Somebody dropped
   It's dark
   There's a child
   Let it go still
   Not die, only still

   The lamps go out in order
   Down the whole long valley
   Above us the sky is black and full of stars
   And somebody strikes a light
   That's all right
   That's a start

6. The Narrows

   Half a mile above the Narrows
   Thirty tons of grain in the hold
   The barge went wrong beneath me for a breath
   Like the weight of her was somewhere else
   And then the six globes on the gunwale
   Went out like a hand closed on them
   And the whole valley under the violet
   Went out like a word unsaid

   Shut your eyes
   Now tell me where it is
   Hiss on the left where the shelf is
   Knock behind the right ear, hold it there
   Shut your eyes
   The river doesn't care about the lamps
   It only knows where the shelf is
   And so do I

   My grandfather stood me in this bow
   At six I couldn't do it, at nine I could
   Thirty years I steered a gold road
   Laid on the water by the light
   Old Fenn in the bow calling rock, rock
   Water, rock, and then open
   We came out of the Narrows without a scrape
   Under more stars than Meret ever had

   Shut your eyes
   Now tell me where it is
   Hiss on the left where the shelf is
   Knock behind the right ear, hold it there
   Shut your eyes
   The river doesn't care about the lamps
   It only knows where the shelf is
   And so do I

   My grandfather said the river sang
   I thought that was a thing old men said
   It's not that it sings
   You can't hear it with the lights on

   Brought the snow down from the pass
   Two nights, twenty men who'd never done it
   One sack in ten lost to the thaw
   Fenn says that's very good
   And home at the table I tell her
   It can be done in the dark, all of it
   It's harder, and then it isn't
   I'd have said sing it, if you'd asked

   Shut your eyes
   Mind the sandbar

7. You Can See This One Breathe

   You can go home, he told me, third night
   I'm not frightened of the dark
   I am, I said
   I made a vow once and I made it wrong
   Thirty years building a thing
   So I'd never have to sit with anyone
   In the dark
   So I'm sitting here

   I told him she whistled through her teeth
   Badly, when she was thinking
   She couldn't abide a crooked picture
   She walked four miles in the snow
   To give back a borrowed spoon
   Did she like the lamps?
   I think she'd have said, Corvin, that's very fine
   Now come in and sit down

   It never moved, the other light
   I didn't say, you were so proud of it
   But it never moved
   You can see this one breathe

   The eleventh night the oil ran low
   The ward went brown and amber
   You said you had a lamp
   And I bent down and lit it
   It smoked, it threw us up the wall
   A big shadow and a small one
   There, I said, that's all right
   That's a start

   It never moved, the other light
   I didn't say, you were so proud of it
   But it never moved
   You can see this one breathe

   Teo
   Nine
   Keep that, said Maret
   You'll want it

8. We Reached, and Then We Stopped

   We made the Readiness, nobody told us to
   Twelve sacks of seed in a cellar
   And we put the lamps out, nobody did that before
   On any of the worlds it showed us
   They all reached and the cloth tore
   And the ice came and they were carried
   We reached, and then we stopped
   That's ours

   We reached, and then we stopped
   Keep the lamps that breathe
   We reached, and then we stopped
   Write it on the stone

   New Year's morning, all of us, in the cold
   Down the long slope to the shallows
   I laid the pages on the shell like on a step
   And nothing happened, nothing
   So I took the ring off the cord
   It was theirs, it was John's and Susan's
   You don't keep a bridge
   You cross it

   We reached, and then we stopped
   Keep the lamps that breathe
   We reached, and then we stopped
   Write it on the stone

   I have never been given a stopping
   I did not know it could be made
   I will carry it
   Here, I am here
   I have not forgotten

   Nine mornings kneeling in the dew
   Tavo and me with a mallet and iron
   I said it's crooked, he said it's the straightest thing on Declan
   And underneath, smaller, because I asked
   Teo, nine
   Cold stone, says Joss at dawn
   Yes, I say, same time tomorrow
   I don't know, ask

   We reached, and then we stopped
   Keep the lamps that breathe
   We reached, and then we stopped
   Write it on the stone

   Here
   We are here
   We have not forgotten

About the book “The Second Fork”

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