Have you noticed that your life mimics the migration of countless birds?

Flat fell your seams
Fell trees if you must
Make solemn lists
Of those you mistrust
Deliberate
In triumphant disgust
But you mustn't return
You will adjust

The Scarlet Tanager flies south
From Pennsylvania to the coasts of Brazil
Oh how I envy the songs in her mouth
As she sits on my windowsill

Sometimes I think this house
Is just a phase
I'll build a boat
And take to the sea
Making bird calls
At the waves
The beams of the sky
Are a trampoline

Stay in the North
Stay where you are
You must stay alone
Stay where you are

My butcher paints, preoccupied
With a scene from his childhood town
The same day his old father died
Was the day his neighbor's house burned down
Stay in the North
Stay where you are
You must stay alone
Stay where

Зимске птице путују
Преко градова и обала
Остани на северу
Сам

Scarlet Tanager

I was lost with a friend in the foothills of the Himalayas. We found a shelter and wood. We had three matches. The first and second did not light. In a metal cup, we roasted wheat and edamame, and slept well. 

Let me stay here
I don't want to move
Let me stay here
I don't want to move
I see the mountains

A distant storm
I don't want to move
The earth is warm
I don't want to move
The clouds are warning
I don't want to move
Darkness forming
I don't want to move
I see the mountains

My compass broke
I don't want to move
Against this oak
I don't want to move
Mountains falling
I don't want to move
Mountains falling
I don't want to move
I see the mountains

A thunderhead hauling
Wheelbarrow moon rolling
The trees are crawling
The mountains are falling

A shepherd came here
I don't want to move
A fox and reindeer
I don't want to move
Let me stay here
I don't want to move
Let me stay here
I don't want to move

Distance

I inherited his chess books. I don’t read them, but I open them. I wish I had more photographs. He gave me a necklace I thought ugly. I wish I had it. I wish I had accepted it. 

It's a short ride and a long grieving
The years take what they want
I stand here, hardly believing
That I'll remain when you're gone

And in my dreams
All the seas drain of water
I begin to fall
As the Earth rolls out of view

We play chess in the park, the sunset weaving
This is the life that we want
I miss you, oh god, I can see that you're leaving
And that I'll remain when you're gone

Your voice, your fingers, your heavy breathing
All the things that can haunt
I know that we're trying, I know it's not easy
And I know I'll remain when you're gone

In my dreams
All the seas drain of water
I hear your call
But the Earth grows small
And I can't find you

O'er the Earth, like a star dreaming
The eagle sees what it wants
On the hearth a kettle steaming
I'll sure remain when you're gone

These neon worlds have cold reasons
There's nothing here that I want
The city birds leave for the season
I'll sure remain when they're gone

I hear your call
As the Earth grows small
Out of view

Workbench

The Dark Throat Shooting Star is a flower of desert lands. It can cure the eyes, I have heard. I think of the desert at night, choked with stars. From a snowy mountain, the red sand below seems a tender place to die. 

Seabirds
Are buried at sea
I hope I remember to die carefully
I hope I'm with you
And we're looking out
At a Dark Throat Shooting Star in the desert

Walking in the snow
Looking for tracks
Water and snow
I'll never look back

I hope I'm with you
In the blue-eyed grass
In the turpentine broom
As I breath my last

Та пустиња ме већ чека
Bековима
Душо

The dear Earth
Is warmed by the worms below
Without you
I'd have not place to go
I would spend all of my life
Alone
Looking out at a Dark Throat in the desert
A Dark Throat Shooting Star

In the cool light of the desert
A dying man waits
Waits
For one last sun
His arms, his eyes weaken
As the fog dissipates
But there is nothing
On the horizon

Walking in the snow
Looking for tracks
Water and snow
I'll never look back

I hope I'm with you
In the velvet ash
As I breath my last
As I breathe my last

Та месецина
Зрак сунца
Та пустиња
Ме већ цека
О душо моја
О хајде самном
Хајде тамо
Хајде крени, хајде подји полази
О срце моје
Хајде
Хајде мали, хајде додји
Хајде додји, долази
У мрак

Into the cool
Desert sun

Seabirds

There is a field in Indonesia of which I cannot stop thinking. We sat in plastic chairs among tall, wet grass. I was brought a coconut and a warm beer. Men laid flowers in my hair and braided it. Frangipani, not daisies.

I hear the daisies growing
You ask me a great many things
We come to a bird as we walk down the road
He's pretty, but there's blood on his wings

You ask with the eyes of a lover
Where all the "sorrow has healed"
Where do I get my "fear and pleasure these days"
A sudden flock darkens the field

Tell me
Where will we go when we wake
In the hallways of the damned
Will I remember your face
Will our souls
Do as we've planned

You take me to some broken place
To a slip where the ferries had been
You sit here smoking and warming your hands
The fish are pretty, but there's blood on their fins

Tell me where
Will we go when we wake
In the hallways of the damned
Will I remember your face
Will our souls
Do as we planned
Will our souls do

Cамо се сећам
Bетра и звезда

Oh my darling
Do you remember

What you loved when you were little
And as we sat
In the darkest shadows of a meadow
The tallest trees
Looked like men
I loved you then
I loved you then

There is a wind in the twilight
It carries a song through the trees
I get the feeling this is a story I know
And there's somewhere I'd rather be

Daisies

I have not been to Barcelona. What good can come of a different life? 

If I had another life
Not a better life, just a different life

I might live in Barcelona
On the 7th floor near a river
Above an old banker who'd lived there forever

I'd write stories on balconies
Ambitious tragedies with passages like

"Here she sits
She bites her tongue
He lowers his gaze
She screams at the room,
'What mystery is this
What mystery is this'"

If I had another life
Not a better life, just a different life
I'd be in Barcelona

Walking among the cathedral pillars
The ancient olive trees in the vineyards
Watching tourists on their honeymoons
On boulevards buying portrait cartoons

Spending all my spare afternoons
On romantic interludes
With narratives like

"Here she sits
Suddenly bites her tongue
She turns her back to the street
And everything he has become
A dog barks
She throws herself
Out of the window
Wondering
What it would be like
To be someone else"

If I had known
What the world would bring
If only I'd known
We'd both be there
We'd both there

What mystery is this

Barcelona

Despite Borges, Rumi, Byron, and Voltaire, open on my desk, I could not remember the beautiful beach on which I had been. The sand was black; I was in love, ducking between boats, phosphorous on the waters and stars shooting from shadows. “The lion said to me, ‘You are a wondrous deer; be gone! Why do you run in my wake so swiftly? I will tear you to pieces.’” 

The floor of the cave faced out to sea
The sun heated the plain
The indigo sand burned under our feet
And time hunted in vain

We stood still
We stood still in the blue
We stood still

Every man is an organ
Our body is one, you and I
When old friends come, you ignore them
"But who needs a body", said the Deer to the Lion

Now the road is covered in grasses
And I've got to be moving on
Every infinity passes
We've been dancing to the end all along

The floor of the cave faced out to sea
The sun heated the plain
The indigo sand burned under our feet
And time hunted in vain

Every man is an organ
Our body is one, you and I
When old friends come you ignore them
"But who needs a body", said the Deer to the Lion

"I am not what I appear", said the Lion to the Deer

Deer & Lion

I meant to write of Anne Bonny and Mary Read, but I fell asleep and dreamt of falling in love with Evelyne. 

Arms wide open in a field
Her sunlit shoulders bare
Is when I first saw her
With garlands in her hair

"Evelyne", I named my love
Her old name we left behind
We left our garments in the wind to dry
We left our old names behind

The cities fade
The pines grow tall
She's dressed in white
The woods grow walls

Between the mountain and the eye
A pale fire haunts the sky

"Evelyne", I named my love
Her old name we left behind
Like some relic of a storm forgotten in the eye
We left our old names behind

The copper Falcon stays in her height
The silver hare knows not his plight
And in the morn' with the first green light
The golden moth sets wings to flight

"Evelyne", I named my love
Her old name we left behind

Arms wide open in a field
Her sunlit shoulders bare
Is when I first saw her

Evelyne

They met in Rome and played songs together on walks aside the Tiber. A decade later, they met again in Philadelphia. Ben brought a guitar, because he brings one everywhere. Kata sang, because she always does. Outside the El Bar at 3 a.m., The Housatonic was formed. Ben has been influenced by Jewish niggunim and prayer melodies, American folk, classical guitar, and Indie; Kata by Balkan and world folk, jazz and blues, Bossa Nova, and Tom Waits. In 2021, The Housatonic published its first album, Basin & Range. It was recorded in Ben’s living room, over two days, on a two-track reel-to-reel. Ben’s cat Barnaby was not there; he was visiting relatives.

TheHousatonic

Popular tracks