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Hymn to the Night​-​Mare

from Avalon is Risen by Leslie Fish

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about

Written after an earthquake, this is about the darker side of Nature – animal, vegetable and even mineral. The goddess, under various names, is the natural-selection side of evolution: She Who Is To Be Outrun or otherwise avoided.

lyrics

If I see her again, I must die or kill –
In the bleak, dark wood, on the stone-ringed hill,
When the year wears down and the trees are bare,
In the form of an upright white-fanged mare –
For where she appears Death is on the air,
And someone in sight must die.

Have you seen her again in the dark and cold?
The night-black mare and her grim nine-fold,
With her thigh-bone staff and her white-skull globe,
In her cyclone crown and her storm-cloud robe,
With her red-black eyes that no light can probe –
When more than a few must die.

We will see her again when the Earth shall cry,
When the hills fall down and the seas run high.
She will strike her hoof on the earthquake fault,
With her twelve limbs bared to the heaven’s vault.
She will dance in flame ’til the stars cry halt,
And all but a few shall die.

Kristoph Klover: field drum & oboe
Beth Milne: French horn
Mark Ungar: upright bass

© 1983 Leslie Fish



Mount Tam (Anima Urbis)

A song about the grim realities of life on Earth; sometimes survival requires another creature’s death, and sometimes the survival of one community means the ruin of another. The chorus has been used effectively as a banishing charm.

Here I sit on the head of Mount Tam.
Might as well be in Vietnam.
The battle is coming soon.
The stars are hid, but the sky is gray
With the lights of the cities that ring the Bay
In the shape of a crescent moon. So…

If there be anything here
That cometh not in the name of the Powers of Light,
Then in the name of the Powers of Light,
Let it be gone!

Cities live. The stones have soul
As long as one dweller stands up whole,
And here are three million lives.
Their spirit runs through the nerves of wire,
Through the concrete bones and the furnace fire.
The body of stone survives. So…

Warnings groan that the deep plate-crack
Will shake one burden from Earth’s green back.
Tonight one of us goes down.
So here we fight with our wizards’ force
To shift the fault on its other course –
And swallow the Southern Crown! So…

We who feel the currents of power
Have no rest in the darkening hour
Of a war that we did not choose.
But if some city must fall to the brine,
I swear that city shall not be mine.
I do not intend to lose! So…

So aim the bolt, and raise the shield.
The choice is cruel, but we dare not yield
When life is the prize of war.
San Andreas, we curse your name
As we strike your fault with our silent flame
And deflect, and deflect once more! Sing!

credits

from Avalon is Risen, released June 10, 2012
Jane Davis: backing vocals
Margaret Davis: backing vocals
Shira Kammen: fiddle
Kristoph Klover: backing vocals, djembe, octave mandolin & percussion
Nada Lewis: accordion
Mark Ungar: upright bass
Kevin White: backing vocals
Rob Wilson: bodhran

Song © 1984 Leslie Fish

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Leslie Fish Phoenix, Arizona

If there's one name that's practically synonymous with filk (Science Fiction folk music), it's Leslie Fish. Leslie has written literally hundreds of songs covering almost every subject, from the space program ("Hope Eyrie"), to Star Trek ("Banned From Argo") to urban life, history, and space fantasy ("Carmen Miranda's Ghost"). ... more

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