To Brig o' Dread thou com'st at last

[sovay]

My poem "Every Night and All" has been accepted by Nightmare Magazine. It is a poem of plague as much as the underworld; the title comes from the refrain of the "Lyke-Wake Dirge," which I learned as a child from the singing of Buffy Sainte-Marie. It has threaded through my work ever since. (It plays a fleeting but central role in "The Boatman's Cure.") Years later I discovered she was singing a variation on the classical arrangement by Benjamin Britten, but as much as I admire the eerie lilt of Peter Pears' famously dry white tenor, less like the living waking the dead than one ghost calling another down, the old sistrum jangle behind Sainte-Marie terrified me in childhood and no amount of strings and horns can change that even now.

Comments

[asakiyume]

There are some eerie sounds that just hit somewhere in the bones.

Congratulations on the sale!

[sovay]

There are some eerie sounds that just hit somewhere in the bones.

Yes. This song has always sounded like deep time to me.

Congratulations on the sale!

Thank you!