Martell Overture Part Vi: 'O Freunde, Night Diese Tone! ' Poem by Ross Mackay

Take my life back four years, I recall the wild parties, the quick tempers and long summers. I can see them again...

I'd sing for blackbirds while we leant over the balcony, looking over Venice and watching the bright eyes. I can see them again...

Enter the higher men!

The conqueror
The lonliest
The slave of duty
The minutes-to-live
The unborn
The unloved
The market trader
The shop worker
The sober
Those who ride birds.

A last supper for the higher men,
oh night, night, night.
A wanderer in blue, must I sit alone?

Red: For the higher men, who want to sink their teeth in meat
Blue: For our wine, our lips
Green: We're covered in filth
Grey: It's all I see, all I see.

Sitting on the wood of the ark
my eyelids crack under the frost-
the whistling hands of sky
rush the grass from its roots.
All the sabbath through the ground was wet with dew
and loving the sustain the harpies circled you.
The tangent of the pass, the snow is painted blue,
Thermopylae in war again-the obscuring view.

The swords fall silent suddenly,
the sun disappeared.
Mountains grow red,
the priests,
have they not heard that God is dead?


The wanderer stands,

bows west and east,

and thus sung:

All is fought, all is won.


On odeing to joy, all fire ceased.
The full moon in march smoking over the seas.
All light and eyes are flowering
for the timbers of ancestry fold
as in field and factory, we celebrate unity.
Now in this final hour,
we count the spears,
we're surrounded.
I've ascended the walls of heaven:
O Freunde, Night Diese Tone!
O Freunde, Night Diese Tone!
Oh love I love, I ode to joy!
I sing for life, I hail the guardians!
Have the forests march for thee,
for all who live bow down to me!

The cave is where all that exists, exists.
The world ends at the skin,
the cities are in my hands,
the temples are in my mind,
the mountains are my feet,
the rivers are my veins,
the love is my heart.

The wanderer above a sea of gold,
where he steps is sea no more
but the path of the higher man
and the kingdom of all his eyes.

Now we count the merchant ships,
which come sailing from your lips
Now I count the oars,
the slaves
the salt water which they dip.