Read by the AuthorAudio Excerpts from the Work of Ursula K. Le GuinA Book of Songs
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The Old Lady I have dreed my dree, I have wooed my wyrd, and now I shall grow a five-foot beard and braid it into tiny braids and wander where the webfoot wades among the water’s shining blades. I will fear nothing I have feared. I’m the queen of spades, the jack of trades, braiding my knives into my beard. Why should I know what I have known? Once was enough to make it my own. The things I got I will forget. I’ll knot my beard into a net and cast the net and catch a fish who will ungrant my every wish and leave me nothing but a stone on the riverbed alone, leave me nothing but a rock where the feet of herons walk. |
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I will follow the meter man and read the whirling dials hidden on houses by bushes, O sweet Peter my meter man! The dials go creepwhirling round and round. Thrushes are chuckling under the bushes. Here comes the postman walking his miles round and round, over the ground, brave Daily Bailey my maily man! I will destroy the dials with you, I will lose the letters with you, Peter the Reader, Bailey-go-gaily, only be true to me, only be true. |
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The Girl at the Gate of Fairyland Were it only I and Oberon, the old tale would take a new turn. Titania and Tam Lin, some trim lad it always is, she aching after him, the Queen and the commoner. Then something queers it, her fancy fades, she finds a new one, and Tam’s on the hillside, heavy-hearted, palely loitering, dead leaves in his pocket. But riding past on their pale roans, if the Elf Lord, not the lady, looked aside, if he saw me see him, if our eyes met, oh, my mortality would strike him to his heart’s socket, till glad of grief he grasped at life and left his kingdom for my quick lands, to stand as day outstared the dawn hand in hand with me on the hillside, to learn the lovers, not their love, will die -- if it were only Oberon and I! |
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My joyful Jew, my jubilant Jew, my young King David, an ear so true, I would have given the world for you. Why did you listen to elderly voices telling you how to limit your choices? 88 piano keys. 44 today. 22 tomorrow. Now the only key you play the sour note of sorrow. No music under the bigotries. The tie that binds untied us, divinities divide us. Sheep to that side, this side goats. Still, kneeling on my knobby knees, I hear the holy psalms, the notes of 87 silent keys. |
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My head is wet My head is wet Something Something I forget I did not want to wash my hair Something terrible unbearable or maybe not Sometimes babies are born dead It doesn’t matter in the water what I wanted or forgot |
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I love to sit beside the stream that runs so fast and fiery, setting the forest trees aflame with the joy of its desiring. I watch the fishes of the stream, the blinding trout, the blazing carp, and hear its music go and come, plucking the incandescent harp. I’ll sit beside the lava stream as my lambs leap and gambol like molten clouds at sunset time, flocking crimson, fleeting nimble. I’ll pipe my tune of joy and shame, a simple shepherdess alone, while slower, blacker runs the stream and all the lowlands turn to stone. |
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What song will she sing who is dumb? She can hum like bees, she can rustle like the trees, like the birds she can whistle, anything but words. Why is she so? Her human tongue was cleft by a feathered arrow. The dark sparrow, the judgment crow, the anger owl split her language, left her to trill and hiss and howl. Standing near her I sing for her words of fear and hope and horror. |
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I don’t know why I am so sad. I watch the river ships go by and see a harmless sailor lad and call him and he comes to me into my arms to die and we sink down and down he to drown, not I, for what I breathe is not the air when I sit lonely in the sun and comb my hair and comb my hair till there comes by another one, some boy a mother had, to sink with me and die. O why am I so sad? |
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I am the mad woman in the attic, professionally frantic. Hear my laugh? Loud, singularly mirthless, automatic. I am the first and worthless wife. My heart is not in this poem. How could it be? My life is contingent, like that of the Golem or the Golden Calf, on a word written on my forehead, or a popular belief. I am boring, I am bored. Ha ha I say to joy, ha ha to grief. |
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When the great lordly singers hush, my casual and selfless voice that takes no profit, makes no choice, pipes up, indifferent as a thrush. When brazen monuments corrode and praise is dust in dust with blame and dateless night hides every name, I still go lilting down the road. It’s sad that hopes and poets die, but my dear task and fondest care is to bear softly what’s to bear and ever to sing the lullabye. |
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When Mother sends me to see Gran I wear my old red hood and walk as fast as ever I can, trit-trotting through the wood. And when I see the Wolf in bed in Granny’s flannel gown, he says the things he’s always said and gobbles me right down. Inside his gut I play my drums and Granny plays her sax, until the noble Woodsman comes and splits him with an ax. Then she and I come crawling out all bilious and gory, and listen to the people shout and tell the hero’s story. He smiles modestly; they cheer; and I trot home alone, and nobody will ever hear Little Reddy Ridey Roodey on the drumbarumbarumba and Great Gut Granny on the alto saxophone. |
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I am the woman in the basement singing singing very low so nobody hears me at my magic casement opening on nowhere to go. I am the old old old old woman dug halfway into the ground forgetting to be nice and to be human fingering the treasures I have found: the booby rubies and the faded jade the lying diamonds and the true moon stone. Here underneath my house I’m not afraid. I’ve already counted all the bones. Ulna, Humerus, Rib, Toe, Skull: You’re no more me than I am you. You’re discrete and pure and dull. I am innumerable and askew. Long years past birth I multiply. I populate the universe. Scattered stars in earthen sky, I am all the Ancestors. |