Dunyazade

To tell you the truth, Dunyazade and this poem were the inspiration for the entire album. Dunyazade was Scheherezade's younger sister, the one who asked for a new story every night. These are words I wrote a while ago; some are inspired by Salman Rushdie's The Moor's Last Sigh, and I am not afraid to admit it. Can I set them to music? This is the question.

Dunyazade

I sit
At the foot of the bed
While she tells her four-hundred-ninety-first tale
Sinbad, Aladdin, genies and old gods
And plies him with drink
Gin in a bottle, djinn in a bottle

I am the younger-sister, listening
I flinch when she mistakes a phrase
When her recitation falters
Histories, mysteries, mystories
Her face gets all the glory
No one looks at a plain girl with lively-eyes
At the foot of the bed

Remembers a thousand-and-one tales
She will keep him forever, forherself
But I have so many more
At the foot of the bed
They live in my head

Ximena and the Cid,
Arthur in Avalon and Barbarossa in his cave
Bran the Blessed and his sister-brave
Popeye and Yahweh (I yam what I AM)
Swashbuckles, bawdiness, tea and jam
The Argo sails for the Golden Fleece
And I must sit at the foot of the bed

Finn MacCool lies in Irish hillsides,
The Worm Ouroboros under Sundering Sea
The Wandjina take their ease underground,
And somewhere, somewhere in a tangle of thorns
A beauty under glass awaits a kiss
Here is my flask, I'll drink some wine
And then, like Van Winkle,
I'll lay me down to sleep