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Next Best Bed

from In Praise of Crows (2021) by Bob Leslie

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about

This is definitely a woman’s song, so I asked my talented daughter, Alice, to sing it. I love Shakespeare, and, as Ben Jonson said, “honor his memory on this side idolatry.” When I came across Carol Ann Duffy’s marvellous prose poem ‘Anne Hathaway,’ I was moved to remodel it as a song. Many thanks to Dame Carol and her publishers for their permission to adapt and publish this.

lyrics

Sung by my daughter, Alice ('Tis a diitty for a lady to sing).
Lyrics adapted from the prose poem ‘Anne Hathaway’ from The World’s Wife by Carol Ann Duffy. Published by Picador, 1999, © Carol Ann Duffy. Reproduced by permission of the Estate c/o Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd., 20 Powis Mews, London W11 1JN. Additional lyrics by myself.

The bed we loved, a spinning world
Of forests, castles, cliff-tops, seas
And in it he would dive for pearls
Catch shooting stars which fell to earth
As kisses he gave me

My love who lived and laughed with me
Lies still inside my widow’s head
But once he wrote my very dreams
And held me on that next best bed.

Some nights his touch would spark a dance
And he would move me to its time
Like pages from his writer’s hands
My body’s echo, assonance
Became his softer rhyme

Romance and drama, laughter, love,
Played by touch, by scent, by taste,
In our best bed, our guests above,
How dull the lives that they dreamt of
And slept their prose away.

credits

from In Praise of Crows (2021), released March 15, 2021

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Bob Leslie Glasgow, UK

Bob Leslie's music is now available on a "NAME YOUR OWN PRICE" basis!
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“I can think of no other songwriter who has mined this rich vein
with such lyrical ease and with no mean ear for melody. ”
Alan Reid, Battlefield Band ... more

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