Posts Tagged: Malcolm Guite

Oh Clavis, Oh Key! Gol’s Stavkirke

On 14 January 2022 by Margot Krebs Neale - Uncategorized

«Set me free, cut to the quick to fit, the master key.»

Oh Clavis, Oh Key!
Malcolm Guite
photo : Gol stavkyrkje, Oslo

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Halloween, from the fear of death to life

On 31 October 2019 by Margot Krebs Neale - Uncategorized

They stand beside us even as we grieve,
The lone and left behind whom no one claimed,
Unnumbered multitudes, he lifts above
The shadow of the gibbet and the grave,
To triumph where all saints are known and named;

from All Saints a poem by Malcolm Guite for Halloween

at Burwell Museum and Windmill

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National Poetry day 2019

On 3 October 2019 by Margot Krebs Neale - Uncategorized

If you want to read one or more of their poems, click on their name in the tag list below

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Transitus Mariae – The Crossing Over of Mary

On 15 August 2019 by Margot Krebs Neale - Uncategorized

Shine as a star and call me to the shore.

Chapelle Notre Dame de Bon Port, Saint-Valery-en-Caux
vitraux André-Louis Pierre

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Mary Magdalene – a sonnet for her day, 22 July

On 21 July 2019 by Margot Krebs Neale - Uncategorized

Mary Magdalene: A Sonnet

Men called you light so as to load you down,
And burden you with their own weight of sin,
A woman forced to cover and contain
Those seven devils sent by Everyman.
But one man set you free and took your part
One man knew and loved you to the core
The broken alabaster of your heart
Revealed to Him alone a hidden door,
Into a garden where the fountain sealed,
Could flow at last for him in healing tears,
Till, in another garden, he revealed
The perfect Love that cast out all your fears,
And quickened you with love’s own sway and swing,
As light and lovely as the news you bring.

Malcolm Guite

Mary Magdalene a sonnet Malcolm’s blog.

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Ascension Day

On 25 May 2017 by Margot Krebs Neale - Uncategorized

Ascension

We saw his light break through the cloud of glory
Whilst we were rooted still in time and place
As earth became a part of Heaven’s story
And heaven opened to his human face.
We saw him go and yet we were not parted
He took us with him to the heart of things
The heart that broke for all the broken-hearted
Is whole and Heaven-centred now, and sings,
Sings in the strength that rises out of weakness,
Sings through the clouds that veil him from our sight,
Whilst we ourselves become his clouds of witness
And sing the waning darkness into light,
His light in us, and ours in him concealed,
Which all creation waits to see revealed .

Malcolm Guite.

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Love-Laden Keening: All Souls Day

On 2 November 2016 by Margot Krebs Neale - Uncategorized

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"We sing for a moment, not only with the angels, but with those whom we have loved and see no longer, those with whom we are still bound together in the communion of saints..."

Read more here: the sonnet and introduction by Malcolm Guite that have inspired me to create this picture Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus: A Requiem Sonnet for All Souls Day.

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Songs set to photographs: a challenge

On 24 October 2016 by Margot Krebs Neale - Uncategorized

Continuing to put Malcolm Guite's beautiful songs on YouTube with photographs.
His songs are so full of images, it seems a real challenge.
But I do what I did with some of his poems before, I just listen to the feelings that those images summon up for me and then choose photographs in what I have. Sometimes I will take a picture specifically or make a composite picture but I try to not make it too busy so the beauty of the song remains central.

Redemption Song (A song for Ruth)

Sing a song of sowing
Carrying the seed
A song of hopeful planting
To meet a future need
Sing a song of letting go
And falling to the ground
Of burying that feels like loss
Still waiting to be found

There are no songs of famine
Hunger has no voice
The poor must scavenge what they can
While the rich are spoiled for choice
The stones of fear and anger
Will strike you from behind
Hunger hates the stranger
And cleaves to his own kind

Sing a song of exile
Loneliness and loss
A song of broken bridges
Nobody can cross
A song of desperation
For a word you can understand
A song of fearful labour
On someone else’s land

Then sing a song of marriage
The grace of bride and groom
The fruitful vine around the door
Joy within the room
A song of love and longing
For the children yet to be
A quiver-full of future hopes
Aimed at eternity

Sing a song of mourning
The shadows and the tombs
The bitterness of broken hearts
And disappointed wombs
Sing a song of empty words
And unexpressed despair
Of reaching out at midnight
For the one who isn’t there

Sing a song of waiting
Weeping on the earth
A song of expectation
Longing for new birth
Sing a song of patience
Of watching through the night
Sing those hours before the dawn
Then sing the coming light

Sing a song of harvest
Of one who bind the sheaves
And one who gleans along the edge
The good another leaves
Sing a song of winnowing
And taking into store
Of Barley heaped like glowing gold
All on the threshing floor

Sing out before the Lord of Life
Your songs of joy and pain
Sing of the years the locusts ate
That cannot come again
Sing to Him your hopes and fears
Your tales of right and wrong
And He will make your voice a part
Of His Redemption Song

©Malcolm Guite 2011
From the album "Dancing through the fire"
Cambridge Riffs Records
www.cambridgeriffs.co.uk/records

PHOTOGRAPHS
©Margot Krebs Neale
www.margot-krebs-neale.co.uk

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A song and its music set to photographs

On 21 October 2016 by Margot Krebs Neale - Uncategorized

Ragged Light Of The Evening
Malcolm Guite

I could make a bonfire of our vanity
Wouldn’t smoke out your memory
Something’s alight at the heart of that fire
You walk towards me through the ghosts of desire.

Hidden hearts still call to each other
But when you fall there's no return
If I ever learn to call you my lover
I do believe my tongue would burn.

You changed like an angel on the edge of my sight
The gift of your love was just a trick of the light
I still feel your touch in the shimmering rain
I'd rather be buried than feel that again.

Yes I brought you everything I believed in
Only to find the god withdrawn
I let you love me in the ragged light of the evening
But I loved you in the whisky light of dawn.

We walked together to the very edge
We kicked aside the last minute bridge
For all the years we've both fallen through
I still tremble on that brink with you.

Hidden hearts still call out to each other
But when you fall there's no return
If I ever learn to call you my lover
I do believe my tongue would burn.

You can tone down the colours, you can fade it to grey
You can move to the border where time fades away
Bury the feelings, scrub out the stain
In the blink of an eye it’s vivid again.

I brought you everything I believed in
Only to find the god withdrawn
I let you love me in the ragged light of the evening
And leave me in the whisky light of dawn.

From the album "The Green Man and other songs"
Copyright © Malcolm Guite 2007
Cambridge Riffs Records
www.cambridgeriffs.co.uk/records

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Numbers, a song by Malcolm Guite

On 20 October 2016 by Margot Krebs Neale - Uncategorized

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From the album Dancing through the fire
Cambridge Riffs Records
www.cambridgeriffs.co.uk/records

Lyrics:
Numbers ©Malcolm Guite 2011

It took two loving bodies,
Bringing comfort through the night,
And two hearts beating faster
To bring Billy to the light,
Around a thousand kisses
Saw that baby on the way,
But it only took one finger
To blow it all away

It took a mother’s labour pains
It took a skillful midwife too,
Two grandmas knitting double-time
Those suits of baby blue,
It took years of love to raise him right
With room to grow and play
But it only took one second
To blow it all away

Chorus:
We cannot count the multitude
Who made us what we are
The many friends who formed us
And who carried us this far;
A hundred acts of kindness
That no one can repay
One finger, and one trigger
Can blow it all away

It took that teenage boy a while
To find his own two feet
So he took his best friend with him
On that sixteenth birthday treat
And the two boys took a shortcut
Down a darkened alleyway
And they walked into the crossfire
That took Billy’s life away

I don’t know how the gunman
Tells the story of that day
He was ‘taking care of business’
When some kid got in the way
We make it hard to grow up right
And hard to make things pay
But we sure make it easy
To blow everything away

It took forty-seven minutes
For the funeral to pass
Though it felt like we were crawling
Over miles of broken glass
And I saw it all in front of me
When I closed my eyes to pray:
The finger, and the trigger
And the life they took away

Malcolm Guite Vocals.Guitar.

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