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What the Storks Said

from Secret Garden EP by Cosmic Birds

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about

Música compuesta y grabada por David Hernández.
Masterizado por Pablo Giral.

Poemas escritos por Mario Llana.

Portada diseñada por Isabel Calvo Ferrara.


Music composed & recorded by David Hernández.
Mastered by Pablo Giral.

Poems written by Mario Llana.

Artwork: Isabel Calvo Ferrara.

lyrics

WHAT THE STORKS SAID

Don’t know how it happened but I know it did,
And yet, to this day, many have questioned it.
I’ve been called a liar, a loon and a fake
But these words are true as the quill they forsake.

It all started out when my well-meaning mother
Placed a long-lived looking glass in my hand.
Truth’s gaze and mine met and did not like each other
So I smashed the family Georgian nightstand.

I wanted to run from the house that I mastered
But this ain’t no movie: I picked up the mess;
And since angry men tend to be brutish bastards,
I suitably blamed her for my own distress.

Each time that we hurt those who love us the most
The planet starts smelling a little bit worse
So I took two clouds to soak up the nosebleed,
Shut my first aid kit and proceeded to sleep.

I nestled in bed, both baby and corpse,
While my dreams forgot their daytime job as thoughts;
But out of Death’s pets, Guilt’s bite’s the most piercing
And Sleep is but Death’s more tolerant sibling.

The volatile fabric of nightmares and dreams
Came suddenly loose as it tore at the seams
Of my mattress, which – I took notice of this -
Had turned into thousands of thick ash tree twigs!

I looked up above me: the sky was humongous,
I looked down below: I had been undressed.
I looked all around me: frogs, feathers and fungus;
There was no mistaking: it was a bird’s nest!

So seized by bamboozlement, arms all outstretched,
I ran around twice, then peered over the edge:
A belfry descended, the height made me retch,
How would I go down if I still hadn’t fledged?

As I found myself thinking in these odd terms
A cloud dark and dire came out of the mist.
Night fell on my eyelids and spread like a germ
And my heart felt gripped as by some iron fist.

Three grand ghastly shadows then perched on the rim,
The three plumed eclipses that made the world dim.
A milky fog gathered behind their dead eyes;
When they looked at me, my insides turned to ice.

Then one of the storks promptly opened its beak
But melody came there none.
Instead, I admit, I let out a wild shriek,
For its talking technique left me stunned.

Like silhouettes rise from a backdrop of words
When eyesight surrenders and pages command,
The dreadful bill-clattering made by the birds
Dissolved into patterns I could understand:

“Do not blame, Child of Shame. It will only bring you pain.
Know your sin and change your game like smoke rises from the flame.
Do not blame, I say again!”

“Do not lie, Child of Drive, no one’s going to ask why
You’re not always up real high, shining perfect in the sky
Do not lie, I say two times!”

“Do not fret, Child of Fear. What you get is now and here.
And the demon you hear jeer builds his house inside your ear
Do not fret, I hereby threat!”

One stork then bent down (I slightly withdrew),
She seeked with her beak and picked up an earthworm;
The crushing it felt, I sure felt it too,
And grew more infirm as I watched the thing squirm.

“This worm is your life, your thin silver thread.
One end is the sky. The other, your bed.
Now you know your mission in this wooden womb,
So make your decision: the trip or the tomb?”

The flow slowly faded and I was amazed,
A bittersweet consciousness inside me blazed:
So sad I could laugh – Like some bygone song
So funny I could cry – I’d known all along!

The storks’ feathers filtered the pale northern sun,
The sun it did beam and my eyes they did sprout
To mountains and woods and to all things undone;
I mounted a stork with no remnants of doubt.

On top of the world I could feel my heart swell;
Below, the church bells chimed a tune of farewell.
The Earth seemed to have effloresced a new skin
And I couldn’t wait to breathe beauty back in.

credits

from Secret Garden EP, released April 14, 2012
Secret Garden EP
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Cada descarga del disco incluye además el libreto ilustrado en alta resolución con los poemas.

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Cosmic Birds Valladolid, Spain

Sunlight speaks and its voice is a bird.

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