We tramped in our black coats, sweeping time, sweeping time
In the red forest, emerging to face the day
Pink with iodine, wet, bedraggled, a bit gone
Adorned in flowers, radiant, radioactive
Following a trail we somehow knew
Rain, no longer rain; tears, no longer tears
And the grail, oh the grail, was this close
Finished with foil, wrapped in plutonium
We rambled through strange forests—not a living thing
But the buzzing of flies
And mischievous fairies who danced underfoot
Branches snapped in our faces
Our kingdom behind a chain-link fence
We had our contamination coronations
We grappled in the quarries
We polished marbles and we knelt
And shot for spoils in our fervent circles
We set up our furious camps, our tents punctuated with pegs
Nicked with pocket knives
Little foxes gauging the hard earth
Cursing the bottomland for making us soft
We gathered rye, stuffed sacks, made pillars for our men
We were soldiers with no war
We wrung the blood from soaking beds
We covered the martyrs' rolling heads; we balanced the buckets filled to the brim
And we saw nothing and everything
Our ships boasted obscenities, scribbled on parchment sails
Floating illiterate rivers
Overturned in pools of rainwater muck
We blew songs of praise into horns of sacred animals
Catcalls, confessions, teenage prayers
Woven into tapestries of cloistered gardens
No mother had we now
Vows erupted with a new violence, bearing no ill will
Saved to be born, contaminated with a dust
That sparkled with such strangeness
We wept for joy
A blue light projected from the cap of being
We climbed the stairs into a bluer heaven
Scarred with streamers bleeding the wind
We savored the spectacle, and then it disappeared
But we were already gone
We possessed a new radiance, dew dropped from our noses
We boasted shining skin, shedding it without a sigh
We raised our lanterns
And some seemed to walk in a light of their own
We drew close to our new kind
Our regulation boots of dog tongue
Our dresses of ermine and fleece
Our glad rags woven by the blind
For ours was a country of sockets that were empty
Eyes that were empty, and yet within
One could read all our childish hopes
Each of us with our own story
Our own sweet life
Cut with the cloth of a static strife
It is time we hear the call
It is time we have our black coats
Sweeping time, sweeping time
It is sleeping time
And soon we will break from our moth husks
Alive in the night—the sky smeared with stars we no longer see
A child's creed stitched on handkerchiefs
God does not abandon us; we are all He knows
We must not abandon Him—He is ourselves
The ether of our deeds
Listen, listen—the whistling hobo calls
Sweeping time, sweeping time
We sleep, we scheme
We press the vibrant string
Asleep for a thousand years, then happily wake again
Plutonium-239
Protons: ninety-four
Neutrons: one-four-five
Decay mode: alpha decay
Cooling towers
Water room: one-seven-two
Water level: plus twenty-five
Reactor four, decay mode: uncalculated
Fourteen minus twenty-two point two; point three
Five percent
Radiation reading: fifty-dash-oh-five-oh
Reactor five-slash-six
Birds were singing
On the night they slept (Five thousand point zero zero...)
Oh, the birds were screaming
Nothing was left (Sixteen, fifteen, ten...)
Each little one
In his own little bed
Each with a crown
On each little head
All the birds were singing
And every note
Gave birth to nothing
For all is gone
For a thousand years
And a million tears
And a thousand dances
On an empty floor
There are roses underfoot
That one cannot smell
There is fruit on the vine
That one cannot eat
And they went to bed hungry
And hungry they'll sleep
For a thousand years
A thousand years
Птицы кричали, кричали (The birds)
А звуки молчали, молчали (Were singing)
Там, где на тысячу лет
Мир исчез, но миллион их слёз
Дал тысячу ответов (All the birds)
Осколков на голом полу (Were singing)
На миллионы слёз
Тронуть нельзя
Под ногами розы
Весь мир — за виноград
На лозах
Они голодными легли в кровать
Голодными, и будут спать
Всю тысячу лет
Тысячу лет
Свет теперь приглуши (The birds were singing)
Пальчик на фитилёк
Пальчик светит, горит
А малыш будет спать
Тысячу лет
Тысячу лет
А птицы будут петь
Тысячу
Тысячу лет
Тысячу лет
In the red forest, emerging to face the day
Pink with iodine, wet, bedraggled, a bit gone
Adorned in flowers, radiant, radioactive
Following a trail we somehow knew
Rain, no longer rain; tears, no longer tears
And the grail, oh the grail, was this close
Finished with foil, wrapped in plutonium
We rambled through strange forests—not a living thing
But the buzzing of flies
And mischievous fairies who danced underfoot
Branches snapped in our faces
Our kingdom behind a chain-link fence
We had our contamination coronations
We grappled in the quarries
We polished marbles and we knelt
And shot for spoils in our fervent circles
We set up our furious camps, our tents punctuated with pegs
Nicked with pocket knives
Little foxes gauging the hard earth
Cursing the bottomland for making us soft
We gathered rye, stuffed sacks, made pillars for our men
We were soldiers with no war
We wrung the blood from soaking beds
We covered the martyrs' rolling heads; we balanced the buckets filled to the brim
And we saw nothing and everything
Our ships boasted obscenities, scribbled on parchment sails
Floating illiterate rivers
Overturned in pools of rainwater muck
We blew songs of praise into horns of sacred animals
Catcalls, confessions, teenage prayers
Woven into tapestries of cloistered gardens
No mother had we now
Vows erupted with a new violence, bearing no ill will
Saved to be born, contaminated with a dust
That sparkled with such strangeness
We wept for joy
A blue light projected from the cap of being
We climbed the stairs into a bluer heaven
Scarred with streamers bleeding the wind
We savored the spectacle, and then it disappeared
But we were already gone
We possessed a new radiance, dew dropped from our noses
We boasted shining skin, shedding it without a sigh
We raised our lanterns
And some seemed to walk in a light of their own
We drew close to our new kind
Our regulation boots of dog tongue
Our dresses of ermine and fleece
Our glad rags woven by the blind
For ours was a country of sockets that were empty
Eyes that were empty, and yet within
One could read all our childish hopes
Each of us with our own story
Our own sweet life
Cut with the cloth of a static strife
It is time we hear the call
It is time we have our black coats
Sweeping time, sweeping time
It is sleeping time
And soon we will break from our moth husks
Alive in the night—the sky smeared with stars we no longer see
A child's creed stitched on handkerchiefs
God does not abandon us; we are all He knows
We must not abandon Him—He is ourselves
The ether of our deeds
Listen, listen—the whistling hobo calls
Sweeping time, sweeping time
We sleep, we scheme
We press the vibrant string
Asleep for a thousand years, then happily wake again
Plutonium-239
Protons: ninety-four
Neutrons: one-four-five
Decay mode: alpha decay
Cooling towers
Water room: one-seven-two
Water level: plus twenty-five
Reactor four, decay mode: uncalculated
Fourteen minus twenty-two point two; point three
Five percent
Radiation reading: fifty-dash-oh-five-oh
Reactor five-slash-six
Birds were singing
On the night they slept (Five thousand point zero zero...)
Oh, the birds were screaming
Nothing was left (Sixteen, fifteen, ten...)
Each little one
In his own little bed
Each with a crown
On each little head
All the birds were singing
And every note
Gave birth to nothing
For all is gone
For a thousand years
And a million tears
And a thousand dances
On an empty floor
There are roses underfoot
That one cannot smell
There is fruit on the vine
That one cannot eat
And they went to bed hungry
And hungry they'll sleep
For a thousand years
A thousand years
Птицы кричали, кричали (The birds)
А звуки молчали, молчали (Were singing)
Там, где на тысячу лет
Мир исчез, но миллион их слёз
Дал тысячу ответов (All the birds)
Осколков на голом полу (Were singing)
На миллионы слёз
Тронуть нельзя
Под ногами розы
Весь мир — за виноград
На лозах
Они голодными легли в кровать
Голодными, и будут спать
Всю тысячу лет
Тысячу лет
Свет теперь приглуши (The birds were singing)
Пальчик на фитилёк
Пальчик светит, горит
А малыш будет спать
Тысячу лет
Тысячу лет
А птицы будут петь
Тысячу
Тысячу лет
Тысячу лет
×
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Soundwalk Collective & Patti Smith
On the edge of the forest surrounding Chernobyl, a stone’s throw from the Pripyat River, stands the church of St. Elijah, the only house of worship still operational within the 1000 square-mile radioactive exclusion zone. There, in the courtyard, stands the Bell of Sorrow, which rings just once a year, at exactly 1:23am on April 26, the moment when human history was forever altered, 39 years ago, as Reactor Four of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded, scattering its deadly, invisible poison throughout the land.
Ten miles northwest, at the centre of the zone, stands a much larger bell-shaped structure, a 31,000-tonne sarcophagus of concrete and steel, tall enough to entomb the Notre-Dame de Paris or the Duomo of Milan. Deep inside it, the nuclear fuel of Reactor Four still burns unstoppably, and will continue to burn for two millennia more, while outside nature thrives in the near total absence of human intervention.
It’s here, where the natural meets the unthinkable, that the story of Soundwalk Collective and Patti Smith’s CORRESPONDENCES continues.
More ghostly still are the same words sung in Ukrainian at the song’s end by the Chernobyl Children’s Choir: “There are roses underfoot that one cannot smell / There is fruit on the vine that one cannot eat / And they went to bed hungry / And hungry they’ll sleep / For a thousand years.”
Soundwalk Collective with Patti Smith Announce “Correspondences Vol II”