Twee tracks die toegelicht werden tijdens een This magic moment-bijeenkomst in de Bibliotheek Oss, op zondag 3 januari 2016. Tracks: The last running & I talk to God

1. The Rose of Roscrae
Tom Russell (Proper 2015)

2. The Rose of Roscrae
Een cd die in april uitkwam
Pas leerde waarderen in mei
Continue gedraaid in juni en juli
En daar ergens sprong er een liedje uit
Een zin

3. De aanleiding
Old Iron Head, the leader,
warbled-on about a time when
the land and the buffalo was
everyone’s - meant to be
shared

4. Een vrije vertaling
Old Iron Head, de leider,
bleef doorzeveren over een
tijd toen het land en de
buffels van iedereen waren -
bedoeld om te delen.

5. Johnny Dutton
De held van de cd
Een Ierse jongen, rond 1880
Wordt verliefd op Rose, woonachtig in Roscrea
Vader ziet de liaison niet zitten
En slaat hem verrot
Dus gaat Johnny naar The States

6. Johnny Dutton wordt ....
Cowboy
Outlaw
Gokker / Johnny Behind-the-Deuce
Circusact, bokser / Irish Johnny
Weldoener
Echtgenoot
Gescheiden man

7. The Frontier
Johnny Dutton - denkt terug aan vroeger toen hij ‘een kid’
was. Een koeienhoeder, cowboy
Aan een gebeurtenis van 70 jaar geleden
Op een ranch in West Texas, eind van de 19e eeuw
Charlie Goodnight, cattlerancher (-->)
Iron Head, opperhoofd van de Comanches
Old Shakespeare, een paard

8. The last
running

9. The last running
Old Charlie Goodnight stood out on his porch on an isolated
West-Texas ranch.
Out in the yard were nine mounted ol’ warriors - reservation
Comanches.
They were chattering in broken Spanish/Comanche and Charlie
laughed at their Indian cunning.
They wanted a buffalo from Charlie’s private herd, they
earned for one last buffalo running

10. Now Old Iron Head, the leader, warbled-on about a time when
the land and the buffalo was everyone’s - meant to be shared.
Before the white man, the Iron Horse, and the barbed wire -
so the Comanches figured one gifted buffalo was fair.
Charlie kept fourteen head on a far hill, so he could gaze at
‘em - as he drank whiskey in the evenings.
Charlie’s favorite was old Shakespeare, a horse killing bull,
but the beast had a spirit Charlie truly believed in

11. Now back in the time of blood and confusion, the Comanches
were the fiercest of mounted tribes.
But smallpox, syphilis, and whiskey had scoured their numbers
and eroded their pride.
Now in beat-up old Stetsons and calico shirts they smoked and
waited in the shade of a Mesquite stand.
And finally Charlie relented and yelled, “All right, ye red
bastards - take one for the old days and civilization be
damned!”

12. Then Charlie turned to me and declared: “Dammit Kid, once we
had a world you won’t ever be knowin’
The Comanche raids, the Staked Plains, the Bosque Redondo,
the great trails from Texas up to Wyoming
The wild buffalo on a thousand hills, or a campfire song -
one cowboy and his guitar a strummin’
Hang and rattle, boy, hold fast, and remember this well, the
last of the buffalo runnin’

13. Now Charlie gave Old Iron Head his choice of the herd, and of
course the chief picked Charlie’s favorite, Shakespeare.
And as Charlie sat on the porch awaiting the run, we knew he
was fighting back tears.
A tear for the bull and the passage of time, and an old life
that would never come again.
The Comanche, the buffalo,the vanishing West - were just dust
on the dry Texas wind

14. Now our old vaquero, Juan, one tricked the bull into a chute,
where Old Shakespeare ‘bout tore the rails apart.
And the warriors waited on their broke down old ponies as
Charlie waited with his broke-up old heart.
Then Juan turned the bull loose and it was all Comanche Blood
Memory, war whoops and arrows and shrieks.
And Old Shakespeare fought like the king of the bison, one
you could kill but never defeat.

15. The Indians cut up the meat and sang a buffalo song, a deep
gutteral sound - their ancient prayin’.
And Iron Head rode up and saluted Charlie Goodnight as the
Comanche rode off across the West Texas plain.
And me I sat there wonderin’ did I see what I saw? The wild
shrieks and the death of that bull?
It’s stuck with me more than most things I’ve witnessed and
all that history I learned in school.

16. Yeah, I’s just a kid seventeen years of age and the frontier
would soon dyin’ and then done.
But now that vision returns back through 70 years of
reflection, my own the blood memory of that last great
buffalo run.

17. Now I lie in the heart of the fat, black soil,
Like the seed of a prairie-thistle;
It has washed my bones with honey and oil
And picked them clean as a whistle

18. And my youth returns, like the rains of Spring,
And my sons, like the wild-geese flying;
And I lie and hear the meadowlarks sing
And there’s much content in my dying.

19. Go play with the towns you have built out of blocks,
The towns where you might have bound me!
I sleep in the earth like a tired old fox,
And my buffalo have found me.

20. Het woord dat toen ergens boven kwam drijven
commons

24. I talk to God
I lock the gate,
I leave the world behind me
I sleep out on the porch in summer
Where the mountain lions can find me
Maura O’Connell

25. I talk to God
I talk to God, I talk to trees and birds
And anything that listens
The ghosts in Spanish oak trees
The ghosts of lovers in my kitchen

26. I talk to God
They say St. Patrick
He drove the snakes right out of Ireland
But the Irish man I married
He had a rattlesnake inside him

27. I talk to God
He went on down the road
Oh the women that he’s had
I changed the lock on my front gate
Good God, it made him mad

28. I talk to God
I talk to God, I pray to His only Son
I see His hand in every sunrise
When my daily work’s begun
And I believe in love with every dying breath
Now and at the hour of my death

29. I talk to God
Oh yes, God, I am angry
Oh yes, God, I am scared
Yes, God, I am lonely
Yes, God, this is my prayer

30. I talk to God
The road from anger to forgiveness
Is a long and brutal journey
But I shall pray to find forgiveness
With all the love inside

31. I talk to God
I talk to God, I pray to His only Son
I see His hand in every sunset
When my daily work is done
And I’ll believe in love with every dying breath
Now and at the hour of my death ..
I talk to God

32. Proper 2015