Songs of Light and Dark
Human Voices concert at Halesworth, December 13th 2009
It was started as a murmur
a memory rising from the cave dark.
Welele, Welele, Welele
the ululation progressed, so did the singers
passing through the listeners
weaving them into place, locked
in a racial weft of half forgotten fear.
A need to placate the unknown grew,
welling from unglimpsed depths
came reminders of impermanence
stripping suppression’s civilised mask.
Each listener gripped by the circle of sound,
struggling for emotional control, shaken
at the stir of the animal within.
Welele, Welele, Welele.
In the interval, in the well lit foyer,
speech was not readily regained.
* Ivor Murrell writes “this piece arose from a concert of unaccompanied singing by Human Voices led by Helen Chadwick at The Cut in Halesworth last December. An unexpected and powerful experience. I don’t know what ‘Welele’ means, it was the name of the piece, and I have not tried to get an interpretation in case it turns out to be something mundane! Since I last contacted you I have been enjoying the vibrancy of poetry in Suffolk, and have more recently launched my own site www.versifier.co.uk to share my poetry with the images linked to it, please give it a visit.