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Doug Davis - Lines on a Page

from Round 39, Week 9 by Monday Morning 3AM Music Club

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about

I've been reading this week about the Partition of India, an horrific episode in history about which a lot of Westerners, including myself, know very little. For those that do know their history, it's a well-known story that the man that actually drew the maps, Cyril Radcliffe, was particularly ill-equipped to do the job and was rushed through the process. I thought I'd write something focusing on his perspective - not a completely new idea, as W.H. Auden wrote a well-known poem that took a similar tack. But he didn't use a fretless bass and a Prophet 5, so there.

Musically, I thought I'd go ahead and start getting back in that Fanner art-rock mode, since I'm thinking about dedicating next round to more of this kind of thing.

lyrics

Can you leave me my tea
Where the sunlight can’t reach
There’s a hammer in my skull
Leaves me useless for speech
All these maps and these charts
Full of blunders and lies
Leaves me dreams of the Red Rose
And Lancashire skies

the wrong man for the job?
I’m sure we’d agree
It’s the first time I’ve set foot
To the east of Paris (par-ee)
but some tasks escape
The capacity of man
If I had three more years
I might improve on the plan

they’ll round them all up
Just like dogs in a cage
But what’s it to me
But lines on a page?

All due deference to duty
It’s a sin and a bore
You were late with my coffee
Nearly gave them Lahore
Did you hear the man pleading
With a thousand great pardons
To save his vacations to the
Darjeeling gardens?

my eyes play me tricks
I can focus no more
But the same flaws in vision
Kept me home from the war
Five weeks to forge
In the devil’s own grill
Foundations of freedom for the
Savage to build

They’re saying this fire
is the curse of our age
But what’s it to me
But lines on a page?

this ache in my head
can you whisper, come near
Can you show on this map
where the sands of Kashmir
Give way to the foothills
And the peaks of Ladakh
oh these telegrammed threats
and the tick of the clock

And did you ever believe me
A ghost of a chance
Was I sent here to spiral
a desperate dance
To twist, for my country,
On brass tenterhooks
For three thousand pounds
and my name in the books?

They’ll measure my sins
By the devil’s own wage
But what’s it to me
But lines on a page?

credits

from Round 39, Week 9, released January 9, 2023

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Monday Morning 3AM Music Club Winston Salem, North Carolina

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