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Rook: Live at Florence Gould Hall, 2008

by Shearwater

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  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

    Includes bonus tracks: the pre-Rook song "Helix", originally recorded for Esopus magazine, and a remastered live album b-side.
    Purchasable with gift card

      $12.50 USD  or more

     

1.
From the wreck of the ark to the fading day of our star the light races the light drags the moon rises the moon sags over the rolling waves and your hands on the balcony as a spine pricks the world and the shudder, deep, is unheard, but you feel it oh my god as the spindle flies apart turn your bow to the biggest wave, but your angel’s on holiday and that wave rises slowly and breaks-
2.
Rooks 03:19
When the rooks were laid in piles by the sides of the road, they were crashing into the aerials, hanging from the laundry lines. And, gathered in a field, they were burned in a feathering pyre, with their cold, black eyes. When the swallows fell from the eaves, and the gulls from the spires, the starlings, in millions, would feed on the ground where they lie. and the ambulance men said “there’s nowhere to flee for your life,” so we stay inside, and we’ll sleep until the world of man is paralyzed. Oh, the falconer awakes to the sound of the bells. Overhead, and northbound, they are leaving his life. And each empty cage just rings in his heart like a bell, underneath these cold stars, in their trembling light. And he cries, “Amen, let their kingdom come tonight. Let this dream be realized.”
3.
The hollow light is still on the fields where the winter has warmed and the snows have drained away and the hunter’s cry is still on the air as the bullet flies home but the heart that’s pierced with it still is racing still is racing, alone The silver shoals of the light in the deep brush the glittering skein where the great, dark body writhes and the trembling jaw the unfathoming sounds of leviathan, bound as his heart, though weakening still is racing still is racing, alone You are racing you are racing, alone
4.
Home Life 07:25
When you were a child, you were a tomboy and your mother laughed at the serious way that you looked at her and from your window at night there were the stars’ little fires and the armory lights You were tracing the lines of a globe with your fingers: cool rivers, white wastes desert shores, and the forest green and a limitless life in the breath of each tide and each bright mountain, rising but now the boys are away, and such kicks they are having; slashing away at the forest walls, with their bitter knives. Sparks bloom in their eyes, and they never look tired. Will they never look tired? On cliffs that tower from the rising seas their bonfire glow where a tiger lies and, cleaning their weapons, they laugh at his useless claws, and all: it is a beautiful night to be born to this life and grind his every bone to powder! Do you remember Do you remember She carried you down to the edge of the dark river and said: Though the water is wide, you will never grow tired You are bound to your life like a mother and child. You will cling to your life like a suckering vine and like the rest of our kind you will increase and increase past all of our dreaming Horse without rider lungs without breathing day without light song without singing a song-
5.
Lost Boys 02:47
My blistered feet turn bloody so I take to the air, and I am everywhere, I am starlight I am moonlight over burning fields and bodies. I stay close to the ground, slipping miles from the arches and arc-lights, into the warm night… My winged children, all will fly over the mountain wall to the lid of the sky, and slice its belly full wide with their warm knives -not the pin-pricks of starlight- but to bathe in the bright blood of the world above
6.
Century Eyes 02:32
You were not the first to arrive, and will not be the last to survive, as the pigs and the oxen we bound to the wheel tear it off, tear it off! You are not the last of this house, nor the first to go over the side. Remember the wrecks of those elegant ships- “Turn it off! Turn it off!” No. Look with century eyes till they make you go blind. Galloping into the void, you are rolling your eyes like a horse, all to turn from the beam, from the eye of that screen. “Turn it off! Turn it off! With our backs to the arch and the wreck of our kind, we will stare straight ahead for the rest of our lives!”
7.
I was a cloud, I was a cloud looking down; Your frantic waving did not provoke feeling. But this little one- Steady your wings, now, sparrow I remembered him- Steady your course, now, sparrow And in the dark, from the sea marbled and moon-blue into the burning eye of the sun without feeling My end was imminent- Steady your course now, sparrow but I remembered him- Fear for your home life, sparrow Fear for your home life
8.
“The lunar landscapes of the Hindu Kush, as if borrowed from prehistory, seem still to wait for the arrival of the animal world, or perhaps to announce its end.” – Rene Dollot “The way is to climb the way is to lie still and let the moon do its work on your body and then to rise through forests and oceans of lives and through the way of the black rocks, splitting, wide, and flow ten thousand miles.” Well, I’ve had enough, wasting my body, my life I’ll come away, come away from the shallows But can this sullen child, as bound as the ox that I ride, climb to the heart of the white wind, singing, high, and blow through my frozen eyes?
9.
The hunter’s star burned brighter than all of the suns in the firmament as through the sky he raged with his hook and blade and the world, unmade As forests bow and blacken the air as the canopies burn away, and the arc-lights fade and no gull remains to repeat its call- Only now would you long for the ancient boughs, the moon, overlapping the long white clouds and the home life of a love who will never return again No child at all would wake to the light of a sun that is reddening like a robin’s breast, and no lioness boards a last, great hull on the waves that close on a world that will never return again and no sound escapes from the night to come.
10.
Helix 04:09
If you love me, come and see me. If you despise me, come and strike me. But I want you to know That for the helix, Bending, unbending, There's always new blood When an old line is ending. I want you to know That in the calm center of the eye, In the bright violence of life, In the rays burning through the ice, I am anywhere

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Recorded live at Florence Gould Hall in NYC May 5th, 2008.

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released September 17, 2016

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