The Rose of Roscrae

Tom Russell (Proper 2015)

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

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

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.

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

Johnny Dutton wordt ....

Cowboy

Outlaw

Gokker / Johnny Behind-the-Deuce

Circusact, bokser / Irish Johnny

Weldoener

Echtgenoot

Gescheiden man

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

The last running

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

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

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!”

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’

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Het woord dat toen ergens boven kwam drijven

commons

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Proper 2015