Song Notes

WOMAN – LOVE THYSELF! Audre Lorde (born Audrey Geraldine Lorde February 18, 1934 – November 17, 1992) was a Caribbean-American writer, poet and activist. She wrote of Eros in a piece that has left a beautiful mark on me as much for its beauty as for how much it confused people. This song is simply a poem set to music that celebrates the female life-forces that still exist despite misogynist patriarchal institutional demonising of female sexuality.

Safe & Sound

My need, you found, I came, a sound, electrified my skin
Entwined it echoed with the wolves and carried on the winds
Outside your door a tempest roars, you take me to your side
In tenderness we take the night back to the sirens pleasured cries.

Up your magic staircase into a cloud we flew
Behind us came a dragon breathing fiery “What-to-do’s”
I came without instructions, well honour and desire,
And a wish to taste the secrets of a passion I won’t hide.

No, not to us will sleeping come, luscious, ripe and sweet
We howl aloud with moans of joy and carnal ecstasy
I reach out to your soul that I may open with my tongue
And, wide you spread your meadowed gates –
I come to where I’m from.

Oh, gently, oh, gently, let me hear my name
As choirs of angels explode in my brain
I completely surrender to Sappho’s refrain
Hotter and hotter, again and again
The soft blazing oceans, the flames that our sighs,
The fires of lust, the pull of the tides
Vesuvius quivers and laps at my thighs…

Out into the wilderness, the Moon a holy light
An illuminating darkness, a ruby cast with light
It guides us to abandon all the fears we’ve learned too well
WE rise and fall in waves of trust caressing every cell.

My heart is beating “one” again it’s happy with its work
Bathed in calm and kindness we have satisfied a thirst
We are born here where we lie and in the moment of this spell
How sweet our breath and pure our flesh, How magically filled.