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In some ways, children make an ideal audience for poetry: they have few preconceptions, they are alert to rhythm and cadence, and they can still thrill to the kind of word-excitements that occur in the language of poetry more than anywhere. They are less concerned with worrying a poem into being than with following where it takes them. So-called "children's poetry" often condescends to children as little people, whereas children frequently respond deeply to poems they may understand imperfectly. We have looked for poems with a certain tingle to them, a sound pattern that makes them good to take in through the ear.
Songs and poems have always been closely related; and indeed, the songs on this record began life as poems, and remain poems. They have been given musical wings, as it were, by being made into songs and sent flying. The music of poems is sparer and quieter, but it is what makes poems stay in the memory. The two threads, of poetry and song, wind through this record, sometimes intertwining, sometimes separating, but always complementing one another. While one's perception of meaning in verse may change and grow with years, the basic joy in the rhythm and beauty of language is possibly as strong if not more so in childhood.
Bill Crofut · Alastair Reid
Bill Crofut's international career has taken him to Carnegie Hall, the White House, the United Nations, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the Smithsonian Institute, Edinburgh International Festival, Hong Kong Arts Festival, numerous performances at Tanglewood and concerts in over fifty countries. He has performed with the Houston, Indianapolis, Detroit, Hartford, Portland and Cincinnati Symphonies, and has written a commission with Christopher Brubeck for the Houston Symphony. He has received a Presidential Citation in honor of his cultural exchange, and has served as White House Consultant on Cultural Affairs. His British television show "Simple Gifts" won the first place Jury Award from the San Francisco International Film Festival.
Alastair Reid is a poet, a prose writer, a translator, and a traveler and has published over 20 books. Since 1959, he has been a staff writer for the New Yorker.
The readings of Inversnaid and The O-Filler were recorded in a live performance at Goshen College in Indiana for American Public Radio in a program produced by Ann Santen and recorded by Brent Rider and Bruce Ellis. The songs were recorded by Fred Hellerman of Honeywind Productions Ltd., Weston, Connecticut.
all music composed by bill crofut. © 1973. ALL SONGS ARE BMI.
Bill Crofut-vocal, 12 string guitar, french horn, banjo;
Chris Brubeck-bass; Darius Brubeck-harpsichord;
Peter Rosenfeld-cello; Jim Cowdery-pennywhistle
The Song of Wandering Aengus
I went out to the hazel wood, Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.
When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The Golden apples of the sun.
The moon on the one hand, the dawn on the other:
The moon is my sister, the dawn is my brother.
The moon on my left, the dawn on my right
My brother, good morning: my sister, good night.
Look one way and the sun is going down,
Look the other and the moon is rising.
The sparrow's shadow's longer than the lawn,
The bats squeak: “Night is here”; the birds cheep: “Day is gone,”
On the willow's highest branch, monopolizing
Day and night, cheeping, squeaking, soaring,
The mockingbird is imitating life.
All day the mockingbird has owned the yard.
As light first woke the world, the sparrows trooped
Onto the seedy lawn: the mockingbird
Chased them off shrieking. Hour by hour, fighting hard
To make the world his own, he swooped
On thrushes, thrashers, jays, and chickadees —
At noon he drove away a big black cat.
Now, in the moonlight, he sits here and sings.
A thrush is singing, then a thrasher, then a jay —
Then all at once, a cat beings meowing.
A mockingbird can sound like anything.
He imitates the world he drove away
So well that for a minute, in the moonlight,
Which one's the mockingbird? Which one's the world?
and the dragon was ticklish,
gloom to the left of him,
groans to the right of him,
like quince and fray bentos
with the gem in its head,
nor the mole that mumbles
If I'd listened to witches
Little trotty wagtail, he went in the rain,
And tittering, tottering sideways he ne'er got straight again.
He stooped to get a worm, and looked up to get a fly,
And then he flew away ere his feathers they were dry.
Little trotty wagtain, he waddled in the mud,
And left his little footmarks, trample where he would.
He waddled in the water-pudge, and waggle went his tail,
And chirrupt up his wings to dry upon the garden rail.
Little trotty wagtain, you nimble all about,
And in the dimpling water-pudge you waddle in and out;
Your home is nigh at hand, and in the warm pigsty.
So, little Master Wagtail, I'll bid you a good-bye.
you would say, if you'd seen it,
like a flesh-and-bone bow,
from the cliff at Piertarvit.
and the thin ribs breaking,
in the sea at Piertarvit.
till, breaking the spell,
with a whirl in his head.
We had lost our lightness.
A shadow is floating through the moonlight.
Its wing don't make a sound.
Its claws are long, its beak is bright.
Its eyes try all the corners of the night.
It calls and calls: all the air swells and heaves
And washes up and down like water.
The ear that listens to the owl believes
In death. The bat beneath the eaves,
The mouse beside the stone are still as death.
The owl's air washes them like water.
The owl goes back and forth inside the night,
And the night holds its breath.
how, from the point of the pen,
clockwise it unwinds itself
making itself a pedestal to stand on.
Watch now. Before your eyes it becomes a swan
drifting across the page, its neck so carefully
between the thin blue lines,
swan after swan sails beautifully past you,
margin to margin, 2 by 2 by 2,
a handwritten swirl of swans.
the soft, curled pillows of the 6's,
the acrobatic 3's, the angular 7's,
the hourglass 8's and the neat tadpole 9's,
on stilts and wheels and platforms
comes the alphabet, an eccentric
parade of odd characters. Initially you may tangle
now and again in a loop or a twirl,
but patience, patience. Each in time will dawn
as faces and animals do, familiar,
laughable, crooked, quirky.
Begin with the letter S. Already
it twists away from the point like a snake or a watchspring,
coiled up and back to strike. SSSS, it says,
hissing and slithering off into the ferns of the F's.
Next comes a line of stately Q's floating
just off the ground, tethered by their tails,
over the folded arms of the W's
and the akimbo M's. Open-eyed, the O's
roll after them like bubbles or balloons
flown by the serious three-tongued E's.
See now how the page fills up
with all the furniture of writing—the armchair H's,
the ladders and trestles of A's and Y's and X's,
the T-shaped tables and the upholstered B's.
The pen abandons a whole scaffolding
of struts and braces, springs and balances,
on which will rest eventually
the weight of a written world, storey on storey
of words and signatures, all the long-drawn-out telling
that pens become repositories of.
These are now your care, and you may give them
whatever slant or human twist you wish,
if it should please you. But you will not alter
their scrawled authority, durable
as stone, silent, grave, oblivious
of all you make them tell.
The friendly cow all red and white,
I love with all my heart:
She gives me cream, with all her might,
She wanders lowing here and there,
And yet she can not stray,
All in the pleasant open air,
The pleasant light of day:
And blown by all the winds that pass
And wet with all the showers,
She walks among the meadow grass
And cats the meadow flowers.
I saw you toss the kites on high
And blow the birds about the sky;
And all around I heard you pass,
Like ladies' skirts across the grass—
O wind, a-blowing all day long,
O wind, that sings so loud a song!
I saw the different things you did,
But always you yourself you hid.
I felt you push, I heard you call,
I could not see yourself at all—
O wind, a-blowing all day long,
O wind, that sings so loud a song!
O you that are so strong and cold,
O blower, are you young or old?
Are you a best of field and tree,
Or just a stronger child than me?
O wind, a-blowing all day long,
O wind, that sings so loud a song!
(to show that they're twins)
they are twins if their names
are perfect for squirrels, like
are mainly for elephants.
will fit almost any twins.
are mainly for fat twins.
of course, are for noisy twins.
Further than that, there's
and have to be used, like
when you have to name twins.
In and out the bushes, up the ivy,
By the old oak stump, the chipmunk flashes.
To the feeder full of seeds he dashes,
The chickadee and titmouse scold him.
Red as the leaves the wind blows off the maple,
Striped like a skunk, the chipmunk whistles
Past the love seat, past the mailbox,
Home to his warm hole stuffed with sweet
Neat and slight and shining, his front feet
Curled at his breast, he sits there while the sun
With its last light: the chipmunk
This darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home.
A windpuff-bonnet of fáwn-fróth,
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, féll-frówning,
It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.
Degged with dew, dappled with dew
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.
What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
The crooked paths go every way
Upon the hill — they wind about
Through the heather in and out
And there the goats, day after day,
Stray in sunny quietness,
Cropping here and cropping there,
As they pause and turn and pass,
Now a bit of heather spray,
Now a mouthful of the grass.
In the place where nothing stirs,
In the quiet of the furze.
For a time they come and lie
Staring on the roving sky.
If you approach they run away,
They leap and stare, away they bound,
With a sudden angry sound,
Crouching down where nothing stirs
In the silence of the furze,
Crouching down again to brood
If I were as wise as they
I would stray apart and brood,
I would beat a hidden way
Through the quiet heather spray
And should you come I'd run away,
I would make an angry sound,
I would stare and turn and bound
To the place where nothing stirs
In the silence of the furze.
I would think as long as they;
Through the quiet sunniness
I would stray away to brood
I would think until I found
Some thing I can never find,
Something lying on the ground,
In the bottom of my mind.
Slowly, silently, now the moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon;
This way, and that, she peers, and sees
Silver fruit upon silver trees;
One by one the casements catch
Her beams beneath the silvery thatch;
Couched in his kennel, like a log,
With paws of silver sleeps the dog;
From their shadowy cote the white breasts peep
Of doves in a silver-feathered sleep;
A harvest mouse goes scampering by,
With silver claws, and silver eye;
And moveless fish in the water gleam,
By silver reeds in a silver stream.
Walking in the fields of snow;
Where there is no grass at all;
Where the top of every wall,
Every fence and every tree,
Is as white as white can be.
Pointing out the way we came,
—Every one of them the same—
All across the fields there be
Prints in silver filigree;
And our mothers always know,
By the footprints in the snow,
Where it is the children go.
When the voices of children are heard on the green
And laughing is heard on the hill,
My heart is at rest within my breast
And everything else is still.
“Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down
And the dews of night arise;
Come, come, leave off play, and let us away
Till the morning appears in the skies.”
“No, no, let us play, for it is yet day
And we cannot go to sleep;
Besides, in the sky the little birds fly
And the hills are all covered with sheep.”
“Well, well, go and play till the light fades away
And then go home to bed.”
The little ones leaped and shouted and laughed
And all the hills echoèd.
He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
One noon in the library, I watched a man—
imagine!—filling in O's, a little, rumpled
nobody of a man, who licked his stub of pencil
and leaned over every O with a loving care,
shading it neatly, exactly to its edges
were pocked and dotted with solid O's, like towns
and capitals on a map. And yet, so peppered,
the book appeared inhabited and complete.
That whole afternoon, as the light outside softened
and the library groaned woodenly,
he worked and worked, his o-so-patient shading
descending like an eyelid over each open O
for page after page. Not once did he miss one,
or hover even a moment over an a
or an e or a p or a g. Only the O's—
oodles of O's, O's multitudinous, O's manifold,
And what light on his crumpled face when he discovered—
as I supposed—odd words like zoo and ooze,
polo, oolong and odontology!
Think now. In that limitless library,
all round the steep-shelved walls, bulging in their bindings,
books stood, waiting. Heaven knows how many
he had so far filled, but still there remained uncountable volumes of O-laden prose, and odes
with inflated capital O's (in the manner of Shelley),
O-bearing Bibles and biographies,
even whole sections devoted to O alone,
all his for the filling. Glory, glory, glory!
How utterly open and endless the world must have seemed to him,
how round and ample! Think of it. A pencil
was all he needed. Life was one wide O.
And why, at the end of things, should O's not be closed
as eyes are? I envied him, for in my place
across the table from him, had I accomplished
anything as firm as he had, or as fruitful?
What could I show? A handful of scrawled lines,
an afternoon yawned and wondered away,
and a growing realisation that in time
even my scribbled words would come
under his grubby thumb, and the blinds be drawn
on all my O's, with only this thought for comfort—
that when he comes to this poem, a proper joy
may amaze his wizened face and, o, a pure pleasure
make his meticulous pencil quiver.
A man of words and not of deeds,
Is like a garden full of weeds;
And when the weeds begin to grow,
It's like a garden full of snow;
And when the snow begins to fall,
It is like birds upon a wall;
And when the birds begin to fly,
It's like a shipwreck in the sky;
And when the sky begins to roar,
It's like a lion at the door;
And when the door begins to crack,
It's like a stick across your back;
And when your back begins to smart,
It's like a penknife in your heart;
And when your heart begins to bleed
Oh then you're dead and dead indeed!
Play the tune again: but this time
with more regard for the movement at the source of it
and less attention to time. Time falls
curiously in the course of it.
Play the tune again: not watching
your fingering, but forgetting, letting flow
the sound till it surrounds you. Do not count
Play the tune again: but try to be
nobody, nothing, as though the pace
of the sound were your heart beating, as though
the music were your face.
Play the tune again. It should be easier
to think less every time of the notes, of the measure.
It is all an arrangement of silence. Be silent, and then
play it for your pleasure.
Play the tune again; and this time, when it ends,
do not ask me what I think. Feel what is happening
strangely in the room as the sound glooms over
I have a garden of my own,
Shining with flowers of every hue;
I love it dearly while alone,
But I shall love it more with you:
And there the golden bees shall crone,
In summertime at break of morn,
And wake us with their busy hum
Around the Siha's fragrant thorn.
I have a fawn from Aden's land,
On leafy buds and berries nurst;
And you shall feed him from your hand,
Though he may start with fear at first.
And I will lead you where he lies
For shelter in the noon-tide heat;
And you may touch his sleepy eyes,
And feel his little silvery feet.
Bill Crofut and Alastair Reid
1 Poem · The Song of Wandering Aengus (William Butler Yeats) (1:11)
2 Song · The Early Morning (Hilaire Belloc) The Mockingbird (Randall Jarrell) (4:14)
3 Poem · What's What (Alastair Reid) (2:10)
4 Song · Little Trotty Wagtail (John Clare) (1:20)
5 Poem · Once at Piertarvit (Alastair Reid) (2:02)
6 Song · The Bird of Night (Randall Jarrell) (1:16)
7 Poem · A Lesson in Handwriting (Alastair Reid) (3:11)
8 Song · The Cow; The Wind (Robert Louis Stevenson) (5:03)
9 Poem · Names For Twins (Alastair Reid) (1:34)
10 Song · The Chipmunk's Day (Randall Jarrell) (1:49)
11 Poem · Inversnaid (Gerard Manley Hopkins) (2:44)
12 Song · The Goat Paths (James Stephens) (2:15)
13 Poem · Silver (Walter de la Mare) (:53)
14 Song · White Fields (James Stephens) (2:15)
15 Poem · Goldenhair (James Joyce) (:28)
16 Song · Nurse's Song (William Blake) (2:02)
17 Song · The Eagle (Alfred Lord Tennyson) (1:30)
18 Poem · The O-Filler (Alastair Reid) (3:45)
19 Song · A Man of Words (Anonymous) (2:39)
20 Poem · A Lesson In Music (Alastair Reid) (1:10)
21 Song · Child's Song (Thomas Moore) (2:37)
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