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Daniel Kahn and Painted Bird - The Broken Tongue
Daniel Kahn and Painted Bird - The Broken Tongue
09 11:29
1. Beyze Vintn
Yiddish: Avrom Reisen, English: Daniel Kahn, music: Mikhl Gelbart
From Reisens 1901 poem, Tsum Vinter. Bundists (Jewish socialists) and Warsaw ghetto fighters sang
last line: Winter will not last much longer, summer is close by)
4. Nakht Un Regn
Yiddish lyrics: Mani Leyb, music: Mikhl Gelbart
5. Migrant Chorale
Lyrics: Daniel Kahn, music with David Symons
Alien evening, dark after four, Once there were bellies of galleons to fill,
Break out the bulbs from the Arabic store. Back from the Ivory Coast for a kill,
Shoulder the market by the canal, Now there are offices crowded with tongues,
Break out in tune to the migrant chorale. Each of them waits for their number to come.
Twisting of language, breaking of vows, Gaggle of ragged, frost-bitten geese,
Translating names to what tongues will allow, Murder of crows at the end of a lease,
Hiding in cellars, listening through floors, Swallows or sparrows, Gypsies or Jews,
Settling debts with inherited wars. Everyone knows when the rent will be due.
Carrying records, town after town, Vultures despising the swans for their pride,
Keys to the temples they burned to the ground, Wearing their wings like a train on a bride,
Mounting the hill for the final display, Under the bridge with their heads in their
Dragging the bones of the bodies away. breasts,
Occidental, oriental, over seven seas, Waiting for winter to summon them west.
Capricorn and Cancer dance a sorry gules lied. Reading of horrors in papers of home,
Crossing Morocco, dry desert plain, Hearing reports over satellite phones.
Over the border and make it to Spain. Shone in the river, the town is a-fire,
Wear for your coffin a mandarin van, Sending the pigeons over the wire.
Abandoned in London on down by the strand.
There once was a good old man of plenty, man of plenty he.
He built him a house on the edge of the town,
High as the tallest tree.
He built the roof of solid gold, the walls of solid clay.
and in the basement, on the floor, his wife and children lay.
O why o why, our father dear, o why o why, said they,
In such a manner must we be? O why o why, we pray?
For such a goodly man as you to hold us here this way.
But father was not even home, to an empty house spoke they.
So there they were and there they are and there theyll ever stay,
Beneath the biggest house in town whose master is away.
While all the riches of the world are locked away from all,
We sit beneath the world of light and wait for the masters call.
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