Cormorant - Song Three

Lyrics:

She saw a cormorant ensnared on a short twine,

Forever in service, an instrument of man.

With no hope of leaving, no desire in proceeding,

Weep for him the bird doomed to drown.

 

But in that cave where she was sleeping,

I prayed, and I prayed to take her hand.

And see these shouts of modern yearning,

Eclipsed by the whisper and flow of the sand.

 

For I saw a cuckoo call out her warning,

Forever a mourning her exiled kin.

The cost of her grieving her daughters still forfeiting,

So, her cursed orbit comes round again.

 

But in that cave where I was sleeping,

She prayed, and she prayed to take my hand.

See these ghosts of painful choices,

Sever their tethers and walk on the land.

 

And he saw a swan alone on the west bank,

Forever singing its funeral song.

Kept by the queen and her thousand strong army,

But only care and give him form.

 

But in that cave where they were sleeping,

I prayed, and I prayed to write some song.

To taste the salt of gentle waters,

And keep my albatross safe from harm.

about

Superstition surrounds the cormorant, not a bad omen per se, but for many a certain foreboding follows the bird. Milton wrote about how Satan disguised himself as a cormorant when first spying on Adam and Eve. A story from the south-eastern coast describes how a cormorant perched on the village church in the three days before the building as struck down by lightening.

In this song I’m referencing the East Asian practice of cormorant fishing, where a cord is tied around the base of the bird’s throat and a line secures it to the fisherman’s boat. The birds do what they do best, dive for fish, but are reeled in and relived of their catch.    

The imagery intends to portray a strange, sombre creature tied down and domesticated; his wildness and freedom broken.

Again, another half recalled folk memory is referenced in the chorus; “the cave where they were sleeping.” Of the various overlapping stories of Arthurian legend, new and old, caves are a recurrent theme. Where King Arthur sleeps until England once again needs him, where Merlin was entombed by the Lady of the Lake or Morgan Le Fay.

The cuckoo is a parasitic bird, it lays its eggs in the nests of songbirds, making them rear its young. It is where we get the term Cuckolded from, originally meaning a man who unwittingly raises a bastard – interestingly the term is gendered a cuckquean is the wife of an unfaithful husband.

However, what interested me about the cuckoo’s life cycle is the fact, unlike most birds it never gets to meet its parents. It is abandoned from the moment it is laid, a continuously broken chain generation after generation. I think most angsty teenagers and many angsty adults chime with Philip Larkins “This be the verse” the temptation to blame our faults on our parents is convenient if not entirely fair.

I have known various (usually quite well off) people to perpetuate the same faults down through generations of their family, to the point it becomes a shared flaw in their psyche. Humans are not cuckoos our cursed orbits need not come round again.

The symbolism of the swan for me is a sad nobility. Swan song is a common adage I’m sure you’ve heard it alludes to the superstition they only sing in the moments before their death – this is not true. However, the do pair for life, this means swans can and do become widows. This imagery of a lonesome swan no longer interested in life but owned and protected by the Queen I thought interesting.

Each verse portrays a bird caged in an unusual way; their very nature used as the device to cage them.