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The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver · Ririro.com - Poetry

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  Speaker 1: The Ballad of the harp Weaver. Son said, my mother,
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  Speaker 1: when I was knee high, you've need of clothes to
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  Speaker 1: cover you, and not a rag, have I There's nothing
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  Speaker 1: in the house to make a boy breeches, nor shears
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  Speaker 1: to cut a cloth with, nor thread to take stitches.
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  Speaker 1: There's nothing in the house but a loaf end of
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  Speaker 1: rye and a harp with a woman's head. Nobody will buy.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: And she began to cry. That was in the early fall.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: When came the late fall, Son, she said, the sight
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  Speaker 1: of you makes your mother's blood crawl. Lilotants, skinny shoulder
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  Speaker 1: blades sticking through your clothes, and where you'll get a
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  Speaker 1: jacket from God above knows it's lucky for me. Lad,
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  Speaker 1: your daddy's in the ground and can't see the way
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  Speaker 1: I let his son go around, and she made a
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  Speaker 1: queer sound. That was in the late fall. When the
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  Speaker 1: winter came, I'd not a pair of breeches nor a
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  Speaker 1: shirt to my name. I couldn't go to school or
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  Speaker 1: out of doors to play, and all the other little
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  Speaker 1: boys passed our way. Son said, my mother, come climb
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  Speaker 1: into my lap and I'll chafe your little bones while
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  Speaker 1: you take a nap. And oh but we were silly
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  Speaker 1: for half an hour or more, me with my long
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  Speaker 1: legs dragging on the floor, a rock rock, rocking to
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  Speaker 1: a mother goose rhyme. Oh but we were happy for
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  Speaker 1: half an hour's time. But there was I a great boy.
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  Speaker 1: And what would folks say to hear my mother singing
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  Speaker 1: me to sleep all day in such a daft way?
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  Speaker 1: Men say the winter was bad that year, muele was scarce,
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  Speaker 1: and food was dear. A wind with a wolf's head
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  Speaker 1: howled about our door, and we burned up the chairs
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  Speaker 1: and sat on the floor. All that was left us
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  Speaker 1: was a chair we couldn't break, and the harp with
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  Speaker 1: a woman's head nobody would take for song or pity's sake.
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  Speaker 1: The night before Christmas, I cried with the cold. I
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  Speaker 1: cried myself to sleep like a two year old. And
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  Speaker 1: in the deep night I felt my mother rise and
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: stared down upon me with love in her eyes. I
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  Speaker 1: saw my mother sitting on the one good chair, a
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  Speaker 1: light falling on her from I couldn't tell where, looking
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  Speaker 1: nineteen and not a day older, and the harp with
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  Speaker 1: a woman's head leaned against her shoulder, her thin fingers
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  Speaker 1: moving in the thin, tall strings were weave, weave, weaving
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  Speaker 1: wonderful things. Many bright threads from where I couldn't see,
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  Speaker 1: were running through the harp strings rapidly, and gold threads
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  Speaker 1: whistling through my mother's hand. I saw the web grow
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  Speaker 1: and the pattern expand. She wove a child's jacket, and
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  Speaker 1: when it was done, she laid it on the floor
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  Speaker 1: and wove another one. She wove a red cloak, so
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  Speaker 1: regal to see. She's made it for a king's son,
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  Speaker 1: I said, And not for me, but I knew it
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  Speaker 1: was for me. She wove a pair of breeches, quicker
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  Speaker 1: than that. She wove a pair of boots, and a
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  Speaker 1: little cocked hat. She wove a pair of mittens, She
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  Speaker 1: wove a little blouse. She wove all night in the
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  Speaker 1: still cold house. She sang as she worked, and the
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  Speaker 1: harp strings spoke. Her voice never faltered, and the thread
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  Speaker 1: never broke. And when I awoke, there sat my mother
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  Speaker 1: with the harp against her shoulder, looking nineteen and not
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: a day older, a smile about her lips and a
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  Speaker 1: light about her head, and her hands in the harp
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  Speaker 1: strings frozen dead and piled up beside her, and toppling
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  Speaker 1: to the skies were the clothes of a king's son.
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  Speaker 1: Just my sighs.