Work Text:
Podfic :
INWARD
Heureux comme un roi, riche comme un milliardaire, libre comme un homme
Your foot lowers on the copper step of the railcar your hand tight on the handle of your bottle green suitcase
There is a world away and a world beyond and a world within
Take the absence of light
Now paint it grey
Make it move like an ocean, on that one week a year where the tides are greatest
And people gather to watch the waves crash against the cliffs
Gather to feel awe and fear, stepping towards the water to be brushed by its strength
Now make the waves memories
Paint them with all the textures that haunt a human mind
The forgotten seconds of being born, the instants you lose before going under the surgeon’s knife, the hours of your life you spend falling asleep.
Add them all up, multiply them, dump them into the great grey nothing
All the faces you ever saw and all those you brain made up to plump up your dreams, and the hands you shook, and barely brushed, and clasped, and tried to hold onto in a busy crowd, the eyes you dared not cross, the eyes you kept meeting, the eyes you stared at, unblinking, unmoving, until a hand, unseen, unfelt, closed your eyelids
I found solace, in the silence
I found peace, in the breathing of the wind
I found harmony, in the humming beneath my skin
And all of this, I found through
Parsley sage rosemary and thyme
Mangina mangina- a small kid stands by the Lincoln tunnel, he's selling plastic roses for a buck
By the moonlight shadow
There was a time you didn't understand those words, when words were sounds
You can't go back - unfocus your mind and you still understand
Ton propre langage inconnu sur ta langue, comme un invité dans une maison d'enfance : d'autres ont grandi ici, chaque lame du plancher est plus familière que leurs corps changés.
You step in this too-well known, too-well loved foreign house : you’re an intruder in a adored space, bow your head in deference and keep your own love in check
I found solace, in the silence
Noise and light always, two anchors that drag you under the water – a memory, all yours, asking, why do I feel, sometimes, like sand falling in an hourglass, and each grain of sand rubs against the others in silence and makes no sound at all, and the silence grows and grows until it hurts my head?
The silence of incomprehension answers – another anchor, all yours.
You learn to hold onto the silence, you don’t tame it, it trains you. In inaction, sounds still hurt, gotta keep moving now, gotta keep snapping those fingers together, gotta
I found peace, in the breathing of the wind
It’s not as much a place as it is a moment – it is a place, but you wouldn’t be able to catch it in a photograph
The gust of wind makes the sand fly around the old cannon ball impact on the ground, and it rises in a small tornado
Close your eyes against the dust but don’t miss a second of it – the wind from the sea blowing exactly right, the sand laying there in the crevice of the impact, your legs bringing you here at the right moment– there are too many variables, this will not happen again
The gust of wind is written in your mind
The way the sand floats in the air, caught in a dance like a ribbon unfolding
The film plays – la pellicule se déroule, tchak tchak tchak tchak rien n’existe que le souvenir
And go south in winter
On the tireless roads in my dreams
Eyelids are the brain’s silver screen
I found harmony, in the humming beneath my skin
Because I have to have a body, right? I ought to
Or I might lose the rest of me
The silhouette of me
Sings beneath layers upon layers of unfamiliar terrain
I listen to it and it answers with pains and sores and cramps and shivers
To each its native tongue
I was born here but I’m not fluent yet
I’m guided by the hum like a child is lulled to sleep
Don’t need to know the words, only trust the sounds to carry you to the other side of night
And all of this I found through
All of this I found through
I’ve looked for ways to end this line and I can’t say anything but love
And it sounds strange and too much and too easy maybe
But if I say it enough it might be true
Si je le dis avec assez de voix, peut-être que d’amour tout sera peint vraiment
Jumble those words around, make them a maze – it’s only when you’re lost that you think to look for an exit
A straight road into darkness – trees on either side darker than the dark night sky
The engine purrs – you don’t know how it makes the car move but it’s there, it’s moving, it shakes your bones through the point of contact of your cheek on the window
Forward
The radio hums – you don’t know how the music comes from the antenna to the box with the orange lights breaking the darkness but it’s there, and if it’s there, there is an antenna somewhere beyond the night, a singer singing a world away, and the sounds reaching within.
Inward
You will think of this moment later – and you don’t how or why your brain latches on this specific part of the journey , the car turns, the trees arches above, and one day you will see a deer jump across the road
Forward
Et les eaux limoneuses de l’Amour charriaient des millions de charognes
I found solace, in the silence
I found peace, in the breathing of the wind
I found harmony, in the humming beneath my skin
And what I found, I found through love