Conspiracy

MARY BORDEN
Everything’s arranged carefully arranged
that men should be mangled and men should be mended

Just as you send your clothes to the laundry
Repair them when they come back Clip the ravelled edges
So we recycle our men to the trenches
Sew up their holes until they’re dead

Marching down the road with their jaunty tilted caps
They pass in the morning throwing kisses to the girls
Then in the evening from the ambulance
like bread from an oven men on stretchers

With needles and threads With knives and scissors
as red blood spills we tend the torn
Nothing new can be born of this
But it’s all arranged carefully arranged

The Coffin of Night

STORYTELLERS
Starved of sleep
the poet weeps
Carves her songs
in the coffin of night

And how shall so much lament
turn to lullaby
War has no midwife
to deliver new life

Homesick Heartsick
Homesick Heartsick
Heartsick

Words and music by Glenda Cloughley, from The People's Passion written for A Chorus of Women in 2018