And I’m never gonna smoke again –
I’m gonna be a Mormon, or a rescued beagle,
No more roll-ups, as high as an eagle,
Till the wheezes, the hacks and the rasps have taken the hint –
I’m gonna survive on placebo patches and mints,
Till I can’t stand the pain.
And I’m never gonna drink again –
I’m gonna be Methodist, or a prude,
Resisting the caffeinated and brewed,
Till the migraines, the slurs and the shakes have loosened the strap –
I’m gonna survive on organic smoothies and tap,
Till I can’t stand the pain.
And I’m never gonna eat again –
I’m gonna be a model, or maybe a monk,
Working out the body and cutting out the junk,
Till the ounces, the pound and the stones have fallen away –
I’m gonna survive on wholemeal carrots and hay,
Till I can’t stand the pain.
Sketch of the bas relief on the Altar of Domitius, showing different stages of a census (the original is one long strip, here split in two. Judging from the armour, it likely dates from just before the Marian Reforms of 9894 HE.
sketch
The Counting Carol
[parts in italics are sung by all.]
The Romans go from house to house, Just counting – The Romans go from house to house
To count each man and dog and mouse,
And grub and flea and bug and louse, In city, plain and mountain. And when they knock upon our door
To tally up our stock and store,
Then what shall be our docket score ?
But hark, [knock knock]
But hark, [knock knock]
But hark, I hear them knocking…
I count twelve notes that make a scale. So one last time, let us regale ! Twelve are the jurors, twelve are the scribes,
Twelve are the inches and twelve are the tribes, And after a twelvemonth’s high society, Then twelve are the steps to dry sobriety.
Eleven players form a team, Be they ladies, be they gents.
Ten is the base of our number sense, Where digits get a neighbour.
Nine are the months of labour, From conception through to birth.
Eight the planets, like the Earth, Orbiting the Sun we are.
Seven diff’rent grades of star – Oh be a fine girl, kiss me ![/Oh be a fineguy, kiss me !]
Six the kingdoms of life we see – Do kings play chess on fine green silk ?
Five is the hour we harvest the milk, Five, five per day to thrive ! Five are my fingers, five are my toes,
Five is the starfish and five is the rose. A hedgerow rose ? Well, I suppose.
There’s always five on one of those. Five are the petals and the leaves she grows, Attracting the bees and attracting the nose.
Four are the forces, I propose, Forces nature shall have it be – Electromagnetic and gravity,
And the strong and the weak attraction.
Three each science branch or faction – Bio, chemo and physio learning. Three the dimensions through which we’re turning,
And three the hands on my watch tell time.
Two is the first and smallest prime,
Two is the first of the even-kind. Two, oh two, you’re one behind, You’re second-best at bestest.
And then came one, and so we rest –
We’ve counted each and ev’ry guest. For one is one, the last and first, The very best, the very worst. For one is one, is most perverse – The all-enclosing universe.
This is intended to be a cumulitive carol, like Green Grow The Rushes, Oh or that other one whose name I can’t recall. It starts from 1 and works its way upto 12, with cut-down verses to speed things along (they’re only sung in full when they’re introduced and on the final time. Thus the penultimate verse is like this:
The Romans go from house to house, Just counting – But hark, [knock knock]
But hark, [knock knock]
But hark, I hear them knocking…
Eleven players form a team, Be they ladies, be they gents.
Ten is the base of our number sense, Where digits get a neighbour.
Nine are the months of labour, From conception through to birth.
Eight the planets, like the Earth, Orbiting the Sun we are.
Seven diff’rent grades of star – Oh be a fine girl, kiss me ! [/Oh be a fine guy, kiss me !]
Six the kingdoms of life we see – Do kings play chess on fine green silk ?
Five is the hour we harvest the milk, Five, five per day to thrive !
Four are the forces, I propose, With the strong and the weak attraction.
Three each science branch or faction, And three the hands on my watch tell time.
Two is the first and smallest prime, Two is the first of the even-kind.
And then came one, and so we rest – We’ve counted each and ev’ry guest.
Mary, Mary,
Little fairy,
Like those Grecian girls of old:
The bull and swan have entered in,
The golden rain has soaked your skin,
So what’s inside,
Mary Bride,
And were you told ?
Like the girls and the Nephelim did when they kiss
In the book of the partheno-Genesis,
So a tale this big is too big to disbelieve,
And the giants in this world are conceived
By women who are bold.
Mary, Mary,
Extr’ordinary
How does your foetus grow on its own ?
Maybe a haploid, unfertilised seed,
That’s only half a human, indeed !
So are you sure,
Mary Pure,
Just what you’ve grown ?
But it has been shown in the lizard and the aphid,
And a miracle Messiah has been prophesised since David,
In a tale so big it’s too big to be denied –
So the drag-king of the Jews must be supplied
Through your daughter – through your clone.
If depression is a black dog,
Then I reckon that
Paranoia is a grey rat:
Small and sulking,
Squeaking, skulking –
Always watching,
Always gnawing,
Never passioned,
Never thawing.
Yes, that’s about the sum:
A greyed-out rat who always looks askance –
A rat who feasts on ev’ry crumb,
And looks for plots in ev’ry chance.
A rat who thinks the world must think
About his each and ev’ry thought –
A rat who sniffs at ev’ry chink,
And always find the intrigues sought.
He pads in silently, and whispers how
The world conspires to bring his doom,
The righteous woes that plague him now,
His whiskers twitching in the gloom.
Then scuttles off to disavow,
And seep his piss across the room.
This is the time of the viral star:
Of the unintended baritones,
Of sudden blasts on nose trombones,
And the throaty roar of bass catarrh !
The husky whisper strains with grief
To the beat of mints against the teeth.
It was late o’clock in late October, I recall,
As I buttoned up my coat and set off home –
My hours in the library had still left no trace,
The depths of my mind were whipped to foam.
So, keen to sooner reach out to my waiting bed,
I took a shortcut past the ancient church –
And in my barely-woken walk I stumbled through the graves,
As I fancied how their folks might up-and-lurch.
But I never thought they would…
But I never thought they’d push the slabs aside…
And yet, here were their skeletons
Just walking round as if they’d never died !
Good thing I was overtired,
Or else I’d surely have to scream and hide…
Paralysed by shivering and weariness,
For the sight of all those bones had rattled me –
But most because I’d spent all week to memorise
On the finer points of man’s anatomy.
And as I looked in horrified astonishment,
A prayer had made its way onto my lips:
“The head bone is connected to the vertebrae,
And the metacarpals to the fingertips.”
But I never thought they could…
Yet I never had the chance before to watch the dead.
And yes, the hour was very late,
But then, well, so were they ! Yet there they tread –
And right there in the flesh…
Or, excuse me, out the flesh, I should have said.
I saw upon those skeletons the marks of busy lives,
Like bones that once had broken and re-set –
I saw some more with fractures, some with cancers, some with spurs,
In a lesson I could never now forget !
Their joints had lost their cartilage, yet showed no trace of arthritis,
Where bones were grinding naked onto bones,
And osteoporosis having tapered some so thin,
Yet so carelessly they danced around the stones.
And I’ve never understood…
But I suddenly remembered ev’ry word I’d read –
These visions were impossible,
Because of ev’ry fact that popped-up in my head
And I was overcome,
And I dropped down in exhaustion on my grassy bed.
And when I woke up, slowly woke up, propped against a gravestone,
Quite alone in my new neighbourhood –
Well, I dusted off the dew and I made my way to class,
To a test I had to pass – and knew I would.
Now I cannot expect you to believe a single word of it,
Yet deep down in my marrow, there’s a shred…
Though I looked around the churchyard on that morning as I left
And saw ev’rything was still and very dead.
But I never said you should…
Don’t believe my ev’ry no-word-of-a-lie –
And as a trainee-medic,
I will always trust in science till I die.
But whatever did occurred that night,
I’ll always know one thing – dem bones ain’t dry !
I am a little bit embarrassed to admit that ‘arthritis’ above needs to be streesed on the first syllable instead of the second to fit the rhythm, but I can’t be that embarrassed since I haven’t removed it.
In the Beginning there came forth the bursting,
With ev’rything rushing from ev’rything else
And which is still pushing on all things today,
Though no-one can feel this occur.
Then came the clouds that would slowly grow bigger
By drawing in other clouds, adding their bulk,
And the bigger they got, so the stronger they drew –
For all things attract and concur.
Then the clouds shrank, but not in their weight,
Till they’re thicker than stone and they’re thicker than gold –
Their centres grew hotter and started to burn,
And that is how stars were begun.
And in with the stars came there light and came heat,
And those parts of clouds still left over became
The planets that circle them, round and around.
And thus, although later, our Sun.
A ball of great fire, a sibling to stars,
But much, so much closer – with planets with moons
All smaller by far than the Sun at their centre.
And each, not a disc, but a ball.
And the third planet out – why, here lies the Earth !
In its earliest days, so another young planet
Collided, and flung out much debris and rock,
And the Moon was thus formed from it all.
The Earth was still hot, with no water upon –
But one day it started to rain, and to rain,
And to rain, until leaving its surface entire
Now covered by one endless tide.
And the seafloor was cracking up, carving out plates –
Floating around on the runny, deep rock,
Barging around, bringing quakes and volcanoes –
So slow, yet relentless their slide.
This caused for the granite to well from beneath –
Far tougher than seabed, this new kind of rock
Would form up the heart of the massive landmasses
That rose on up out of the sea.
Life in that ocean was also beginning –
So tiny and simple, and so it remained.
But ev’ry new offspring was just slightly diff’rent
And ev’ry slight diff’rence was key.
The better did better, the lesser did less,
The better spawned greater, and so did their young.
So slowly life changed into myriad forms.
Then life got much bigger and complex.
For came there a time when these tiny lone beings
Did better by working together, by losing
Their selfhood – to building a single large creature.
And some gave up budding, for sex.
Some became plants, who could not move themselves –
And some became animals – these ones, they could.
So many animals, so many strategies –
Hard shells and soft shells and backbones and more.
Shellfish were rampant, they’re moment had come.
Many would die out, they did not survive,
While others still thrive – and small is the diff’rence.
They filled all the sea from the waves to the floor
The first on the land were the plants on the beaches,
Spreading thence over the virgin terrain,
And bugs were soon following, creeping and flying,
As coal was creating from dead tree and fern.
The fish had grown out of a wormlike beginning.
Some pulled themselves out of the water with fins,
At first only briefly, then longer and longer,
Until came the time when they didn’t return.
Unlike the insects, these creatures grew larger,
And larger, and larger, and ever more so.
But when the Earth changed, they could not survive it –
Except for the birds, who flew on.
Now came to prominence more fish-descendants,
Who bore their young live and who nursed them with milk –
They filled up the landscape the giants had quitted,
But stones still remain of those gone.
Some were the monkeys, who lived in the trees,
And some had grown larger, and some had come down,
And walked on their hind-legs, and upright, and tall –
These were the humans. So now you all know.
And all this had taken so many years, many.
More than a thousandfold thousand of lifetimes.
And still it continues today, and tomorrow –
And so days will come, then, and so days will go.
But all that I tell you is not the whole tale.
Parts have been left out that need to be told
Parts to be sought out, to draw back the veil
And parts yet to happen, that wait to unfold.
