Wallwein performs Equinox on BBC Frontrow
@LouiseWallwein reads a new poem commissioned by BBC Radio 4 to mark the arrival of spring;
Also in this program @GarethMalone on the virtual #GreatBritishHomeChorus and we celebrate the contralto and hear from rising star Jessica Dandy singing Handel.
Presented by Katie Popplewell
and here is the poem
Equinox by Louise Wallwein
We’ve weathered the weather whether we liked it or not
It has passed now
Winter is the weird uncle we no longer talk about
Let the flood waters recede
The inch thick dust of the memories we have lived with too long
Dust so thick you could use your fingers to score a manuscript of poetry in it
We’ve shed enough skin
We’ve shed enough of ourselves in the graphene days
The time for the clearing out
Sweep away those memories
Recover a sense of now
Release them
The sky is no longer something we need to shelter from
Heads bowed down
Pushing against the winds as if they were portals to a new land
We are the blessed people of the north and this is our turn now
We cling to this earth as it tilts towards the path of the sun
We should all raise our hands
Make like the standing stones
Stand in the morning light
now those winds can hold us up
we can notice again
where our hope lives
Notice the children free from the shackles of the cold days
Now they notice to
how they can run with their kites screaming into the mad march wind
Turning the world upside down as their multicolured fish
catch a lift on jet streams the sky is now an ocean
We can notice again
How the sky breaks its own limits becoming a borderless country
We can fling ourselves to the ground
Drinking in the warming soil
Lie on our backs
And watch the sky dance
The break in the clouds
Becomes our own massive zoetrope circus
As we spin
We are entertained by the herds of elephant trumpeting the shift we all needed
Dragons chasing mice
And all manner of drama as we imagine again
Even in the city we can see each other again
We notice
The rising call of the skylark
it
Signals the
The sun rise
it pauses
Calls us to notice
The miniscule becomes a magnificent opera
The kingfishers emerge from their secret hiding places
Reminding the sky of its blueness
Open your windows
Gaze into the drama of cumulous clouds
Look up
Listen
Unwrap
shed
the weight of the world on our backs
We plant seeds of possibility
Spring reminds us of our roots
That we all came from the land once
Night and day in perfect balance
It makes us all equal
Listen again to BBC Frontrow