Gushing

I got back home a bit - Er, yeah - drunk. I have been obsessed recently with PJ Harvey's new album, Let England Shake, and obsessed with PJ for a lot longer. I'd been listening to her online, the way I know how, on iTube and also at guardian.co.uk, where she has a couple of studio performances. Listening to her and her band of old geezers makes me inordinately happy and being able to watch them makes me even happier. It's quite too much how I love everything about her. Really quite sad, but quite happy too. Since discovering Let England Shake, my computer's screensaver or whatever it's called, is her sporting a rather fetching head dress, which looks like it's been made from ostrich feathers. This weekend I was further pleased to discover more You Tubes of her singing whilst wearing said head.

So, getting back home, drunk, watched a couple, possibly my two favourites at the moment, the guardian video of The Last Living Rose backed up by her old geezers, all of them well turned out and her with her reddish Dorset nose. The good thing too about the studio vids is seeing their instruments (missis); pleasingly sturdy.

The video-videos, I mean the music videos, the ones produced to be marketed as visual accompaniments to the music, are also rich. 'The Glorious Land', probably my other favourite at the moment, starts with a simple shot of a huge tree, an extremely English scene, very simple, very very beautiful. And I've always had a bit of a thing for women with very black hair. Hence 'bulbous english trees, black hair'.


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bursting

is there anything, we ask in our desolation,
is there a reason, enveloped in sorrow we lament
and are sincere and bowed and scraping
in pathetic limbo, in a tunnel of fear.

strands surge forth, the tunnel made strands,
streaming in glorious love and array
galloping strident as the red on the nose
and rhythmic strumming of weeping joy.

bulbous english trees, black hair
woman most devastating in this very
moment this very particle of faith
chanting poetic, wielding drily.

concocting her own verse, her own,
her own, craters, moon landing,
continental shift is nothing in her wake,
is there anything, is there, is there.

cry unabashed, lyric on, score forth,
is there anything, keep the cry and the flame
is there anything, she wails and is wrapt
is there anything more beautiful than her.