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Features the original poem ‘Dare’ by Morna Finnegan
Recited by Morna Finnegan

lyrics

Dare
1.
If all the days
on all of earth
in all of time
reached out their hand
and stroked your brow,
and felt
the sweat on your cheek
tingle now (as it does)
and loved and feared
this face veered
in a rush of light and sound,
as we all are,
as all corporeal life is too –
the ending buried in you
from the first blink –
they couldn’t touch you,
trace you, ache
for love of you
more tenderly than I do.
 2.
I stood in the fruit shop,
in the fattening heat,
and I looked around me at
all these bodies,
balancing their chosen weights
invisibly, behind straight faces,
and I thought
of the day you were born –
that streaming out of me –
and what the body
with its blood lion
knows to do,
and I remembered holding you,
your gold crown
between my breasts,
the hint of steam all over you:
this one recently arrived
from the great emptiness.
 
And I felt the war in this
world, the tearing down
of the big monoliths
of certainty and progress,
and the scorching of the earth-nest
till the children leap across the rails
their tails on fire, and I believed,
standing there
in the rot of melon
and the jam of plum,
that it all comes back to this:
the hand I risk
on your brow this morning,
how it tears me open
like a soft fruit
separating grain from grain,
revealing truth, and pain,
and something-without-name
but close
to bliss.
 
And this, my friends, and this
is what they’re cutting from us,
with their suits and ties
and slick white smiles,
and two-for-the-price-of-one:
 
Our tenderness.
Our pain.

3.
If all the years
on all of earth
in all of time
reached out their hand,
and circled back again,
and lived?  

Morna Finnegan

credits

from Hunger of the Skin, released March 12, 2021

license

all rights reserved

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about

Brian Finnegan image

Brian Finnegan Armagh, UK

A past pupil of the fabled institution The Armagh Piper’s Club, Brian is recognised for his fearlessly innovative approach to composing, collaboration and arrangement.
Frontman with Flook for more than 28 years, he has released 3 highly acclaimed solo albums including Hunger Of The Skin.
‘It is the work of a singular artist weaving his very own fabric onto an old structure.’ ... more

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