Get all 9 Tommy Smith releases available on Bandcamp and save 20%.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Whispering of the Stars, Standards, Paris, Step by Step, The Christmas Concert, SOLOW, Modern Jacobite, Evolution, and 1 more.
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Juggernaut (1600 A.D.) Part 1
I had had enough of stars and silence.
It was midsummer, and I made for India.
Where would I get some life but India?
I joined a boat, and was soon blistering
across the Bay of Bengal to a seaside town
of some fame, what was it called, Puri,
yes, Puri of the festivals. A test case
I was told. Test of what? Oh you’ll find out.
If I wanted people, there were plenty of them,
ten, hundreds of thousands, filling the streets
with chatter and movement and colour and slowly
making a magnet of the courtyard of a temple
where they clustered jostling in ancient expectation.
With a rumble, with shouts, with drums, with blowing of shells
an enormous cart rolled out, what, sixteen wheels,
a cart for a god, a car for the people to draw,
and draw it they did, with their god on board,
that giant tottering legless fearsome one
they dragged as if drugged, they were high on devotion,
milling, chanting, pushing, stumbling, trundling -
trundling what, on those great spokes, to the sea?
I can hear the roar even yet, mounting up
through waves of heat and dust, it could curdle blood
or it could twine your roots with the roots of the world.
‘Who is Lord of the Universe? Jagannath!
Who is Jagannath? Lord of the Universe!’
The judgement rolled on, and made its path
over so many bodies no one could say
who had been shouldered to the ground
or who had shouldered themselves to the ground,
embracing the relentless axle of the divine.
I could not say. I did not want to say.
Shining eyes, shouts of ecstasy,
stench, stampede, shattered shinbones,
sun-splashed awnings, sweat-soaked idols
wan before me like sharks, like shrieks
from an old incomprehensible abyss.
The axle squeals without redress of grease.
Edwin Morgan
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I write it, I read it, I revere that sea
which blues the heaving earthly hemisphere.
I was swooping low over those waves one day
when my eye caught a tiny triangle of island
some instinct told me to investigate:
volcanic, a mere scrub of greenery,
but interesting in its defiant aloneness
thousand of miles from the nearest land.
I spoke to the inhabitants. They were curious.
They were mighty voyagers, or their ancestors were,
not now though; there was some great past,
fragments only, drifting through memory.
I found them quite merry people.
They preferred tattoos to clothes.
They shot their legs out in shameless dances.
What use is shame in mid-Pacific?
Whoever they were, they were not the ones
whose gaunt and awesome faces stared at - not me
but space and clouds and things unknown
unless to those who carved them.
Hundreds of statues, six-men-high and more,
standing, leaning, lying, trying
to break from the earth like Polynesian Adams -
but not Polynesian, they forbade identity:
pointed nose, thin lip, jutting chin
said nothing but Power! Mystery! Vision!
What force moved them from their quarries,
those many tons, across the rough of the island?
They were not moved, they moved, I was told.
Step by step, rocking from side to side,
they reached their appointed places.
Everyone knows that, I was told.
It was evening now, evening of what some would call
Easter Sunday. I climbed a hill near the coast,
gazing across those vast waters not vaster
than tracts of mind new-visited and glittering.
On the horizon, the first ship from Europe:
trinkets, missionaries, trousers, smallpox, guns.
Edwin Morgan
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A continent's western edge, high ships in harbour,
huge harbour it was too, a haven for all,
a hallowed circle for that All Saints Day
of a still, half-gold, half-sombre November:
the bells clashed and clamoured, the churches were packed,
the candles were packed think as forests, the voices
packed themselves into trembling glades of praise.
I watched it all, watched the end of it all.
The earth dreams like a dog in a basket,
twitching: it likes to show it is alive.
At the first tremor, people look at each other,
they are not fools, they know what is happening,
but with no more warning than a crash
the sculptured roofs fell on the worshippers,
leaving a squirm of screams, blood, blazing wax.
Those who could run, ran, ran to the sea
to save them, but save them it could not:
it rose in a wall of water, a wave of waves
that roiled and howled and brought a great drowning,
mantillas, black suits, copes of purple, swaddling-clothes.
That was a fado
singing, fading.
I heard it in the wailing of the wounded.
It rose like smoke from the fires that would rage for days.
It tore the Englightenment to tatters.
It made philosophers of men on stumps.
I saw a small crowd and spoke to them.
Throw away your candles, I said. It's a new age.
Study the earth. Listen to its plates grinding.
Power is yours, not up there - I pointed -
you have a long trek, your own tears,
you must never freeze-frame your fears.
Clear the rubble. Mourn the missing.
Keep one ruin for remembrance sake.
Tell old Tagus a new Troy is a stake!
A woman nodded, took flowers, strode ahead.
It was November First, the Day of the Dead.
Edwin Morgan
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Darwin In The Galapagus (1835 A.D.) Part 1
It was a cool day for the equator
as I clambered whistling over the clinker.
Clouds had brought a shower across the shore.
Grey black scoured and pitted rocks
glistened, and so did an iguana
eyeing me lazily with its wet crest bristling.
I saw the drag-marks of a giant tortoise -
what a dogged message thrusting into the thicket!
And the air was bright with birds, well, bright and dark -
flirting their few inches, drenching the freshness
with a spray of chatter and chirm, with a charm
peculiar to these islands, these Incantadas!
I met a young man in a floppy hat
who stopped and smiled; he too had charm.
'My finches', he said, 'you are watching my finches.'
We sat on an old stump, I cherish the moment.
A man both ingenuous and ingenious,
a genius indeed, enthusiastic, shy,
well no, not really shy, but modest,
that was a type I could talk to for ever.
'These finches - all different,' he said.
'They have become separate species, and why is that?
They had some ancestor in Ecuador
but here their beaks have changed to match their food -
small seeds, big seeds, nectar, and do you know
there is one that makes a tool of cactus spines
to ferret grubs from tree-cracks? Oh
I can hardly sleep for excitement!
Nothing is immutable, life changes, we evolve.
Process is gorgeous, is it not!
Process is progress, don't you see!
He taps my arm, his eyes shine. I agree.
Time breaks in great waves as we speak.
And look, a finch on the back of a tortoise
as if it had been listening
lifts its beak and begins a singing
so piercing it gives no end to that beginning.
Edwin Morgan
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The Siege Of Leningrad (1941-1944 A.D.)
Enormous icy Ladoga, lake for giants,
cracked quietly in the fog and under the cracks
artillery threw across a whistling darkness.
I hunched into my furs, made for the city.
On the outskirts, black figures crouched
to scoop up water from broken pipes
below the snow. Over the snow
sledges loaded with the dead
were dragged by the half-dead.
A gaunt dog slunk near. Bury them quick!
Hunger is in his ribs and he cannot howl
but he can eat! The millions besieged
can eat, five ounces of bread a day,
two glasses of hot water, a rat if caught,
then gnaw some leather, wrap in rugs,
wait for the droning overhead.
Music: what was that! I passed a hall,
peered in: huddled crowd, breath, baton,
dim flash of brass. Crashed of Shostakovich
crushed the frost and raced through the blood.
How could those hearts ever surrender?
Pinched noses and grey flesh, all right; they starved;
hospitals, factories, pipe-line under Ladoga,
Peter the Great's children, yes, Lenin's children,
say what you will, they held the line. They live
like myself who visit everything
but do not always stand in awe like this
as shells shriek through the innocent flakes
and print the north in blood.
I watched
wave after wave of bombers darken the sky.
That night the great observatory was hit.
The eye of Pulkovo searching for Barnard's Star
went blind as the lake its frozen companion
that guarded it and was guarded by it -
until the pain should be melted and the people
sing in the harmless moon of their white nights.
Edwin Morgan
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The Sputnik's Tale (1957 A.D.)
One day, as I was idling above the earth,
an unexpected glint caught my eye,
whizzing silver, a perky sphere with prongs.
I knew it was time for such things to appear
but this was the first: man-made, well-made,
artificial but a satellite for all that:
a who-goes-there for the universe!
I came closer: the gleaming aluminium
sparkled, hummed, vibrated, its four
spidery antennas had the spring of the newly created.
It seemed a merry creature, even cocky.
It had a voice. I said hello to it.
'Can't stop,' it cried. 'I am in orbit.
Join me if you want to talk. Beep.
Travel with me, be the sputnik's sputnik.'
I flew alongside. 'What have you seen?' I asked.
'Wall of China, useless object that.
Continents. Tankers. Deltas like pony-tails.
Collective beep farms everywhere. Oh and
the earth like a ball, mustn't forget that,
proof positive. And a blue glow
all round it if you like such beep things.'
'You haven't always been bound in a bit of metal?
I asked. 'Damn sure I beep haven't,' he replied,
colour chasing colour across his surface.
'I was a bard in the barbarous times,
Widsith the far-traveller. The world was my mead-hall.
Goths gave me gold. I blossomed in Burgundy.
I watched Picts prick beep patterns on themselves.
I sang to Saracens for a sweet supper.
I shared the floor with a shaman in Finland.
Good is the giver who helps the harper!'
'I have nothing to give you,' I said,
'but truth. You have three months to live
in this orbit, and then you are a cinder.'
He darkened. 'You may well be right.'
But remembering Widsith h flushed into tremulous light.
'We'll see. Beep. We'll see. Beep. We'll see.'
Edwin Morgan
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Woodstock (1969 A.D.)
10:20
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Woodstock (1969 A.D.)
How many people can be happy?
How many people can be peaceful?
Half a million in that field full of folk
I counted as I wandered through the morning.
This was the Catskills, not the Malvern hills,
but something good was breathing there.
Was magic the magic? A million eyes
lifted young faces to gantries and amplifiers
banked like some gigantic stage-set-
well, a stage-set it was, a self-written play
rocked in waves of rhythmic clapping,
whistles, announcements, cheers, planes, passing.
Smokes were smoked and backs were stroked.
A man died and a child was born.
Adam and Eve stood naked in a brook.
I should put this in a book.
Rain came, oh did it, thunder and mud.
Put on ponchos, caps, capes!
Bless and exorcise the flood!
Navajo rain-chant sweeps the crowd.
Weather was not the climax though.
What were we all waiting for?
When the clouds had passed and the bands
and songs were ready to be packed away,
in the unspoken expectation, electric,
an instrument rose like a dragon,
a guitar spoke like a dragon.
Starry and scary was the jangled spangle,
not blazing with blandishments that banjaxed banner,
a banshee brandished it in the vanguard.
When Hendrix plucked, it was the mane of a lion.
His fingers did the work of several hands.
But through the growling and through the whining,
through the slurring and through the piping,
through the grovelling and through the scaring,
the tune kept surfacing
almost heartbreaking,
bright and fighting.
Edwin Morgan
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On The Way To Barnard's Star (2300 A.D.)
I heard of a stramash in Ophiuchus.
The constellation, the spreadeagled hero
clutching his serpent, was pulsing and blushing
like a giant squid. What was going on?
I will tell you what was going on.
Worlds were being lost, were being born.
I tingled at news of an expedition.
We were a band bound for Barnard's Star,
the smouldering ruby, second nearest to earth,
cool, slow-burning, oh it will be around
long after this sun has run of helium.
It had, or was about to have, a planet.
(Who can say what time is at such distances?)
We travelled not far off the speed of light -
six years in our lusty photon-rider
would take us to the coasts of the red one.
What did we talk of? What did we not?
Destiny and will, great darkness and great light,
the fiery train of knowledge, the pearl of hope.
Meteors swept past us like battle-shot.
Clouds of gas were almost forms - almost -
but there were no gods, and we had good
blood in our veins, in our good brains,
and in black places too, in memory,
it stiffened there, where there was no grace,
blood, spilt, never to be effaced.
We drank to the dead. We blessed the unborn.
The computer blew its extraordinary horn
to tell us we were arriving, had arrived,
in bursts, were slowing, were slewing
past the dull red glow of Barnard's Star
down to its planet, slowly, in blurts,
landing at last on waves of grass.
Like glass
the green blades never waved, a river
in the distance shone but never ran,
laburnum - it was not laburnum -
dropped hard gold. The powerless stillness
was waiting. Help it. 'Open the hatch,' I said.
Edwin Morgan
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Tommy Smith Edinburgh, UK
Born in 1967, Edinburgh. In 1983 Chick Corea recommended Tommy Smith to Gary Burton; he joined his group. Recording over 30 solo albums for Blue Note, Linn, ECM, Spartacus Records, touring 50+ countries, performing with Arild Andersen, Edwin Morgan, John Scofield, Jaco Pastorius, Trilok Gurtu, Dizzy Gillespie. In 2019, he was awarded an OBE for services to jazz from HRH Queen Elizabeth II. ... more
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