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This page contains various poems which mention Natalia's novelty instruments, such as the musical saw, cowbells, handbells, etc. In poems where such mention is a small part of the poem the line pertaining to our subject appears in green.
If you know of any additional poems mentioning such instruments or if you would like to submit your own poetry which mentions such instruments please e-mail it to us and we will be very grateful and gladly post it in this website. Full credit will be given to both the poet and to the sender of the poem.
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Some say that love's a little boy,
And some say it's a bird,
Some say it makes the world go round,
And some say that's absurd,
And when I asked the man next door,
Who looked as if he knew,
His wife got very cross indeed,
And said it wouldn't do.
Does it look like a pair of pyjamas,
Or the ham in a temperance hotel?
Does its odour remind one of llamas,
Or has it a comforting smell?
Is it prickly to touch as a hedge is,
Or soft as ciderdown fluff?
Is it sharp or quite smooth at the edges?
O tell me the truth about love.
Our history books refer to it
In cryptic little notes,
It's quite a common topic on
The Transatlantic Boats;
I've found the subject mentione in
Accounts of suicides,
And even seen it scribbled on
The back of railway-guides.
Does it howl like a hungry Alsatian,
Is its singing at parties a riot?
I looked inside the summer-house,
Can it pull extraordinary faces?
When it comes, will it come without warning,
Or boom like a military band?
Could one give a first-rate imitation
On a saw or a Steinway Grand?
Does it only like Classical stuff?
Will it stop when one wants to be quiet?
O tell me the truth about love.
It wasn't ever there,
I tried the Thames at Maidenhead,
And Brighton's bracing air,
I don't know what the blackbird sang,
Or what the tulip said;
But it wasn't in the chicken-run,
Or underneath the bed.
Is it usually sick on a swing?
Does it spend all its time at the races,
Or fiddling with pieces of string?
Has it views of its own about money?
Does it think Patriotism enough?
Are its stories vulgar but funny?
O tell me the truth about love.
Just as I'm picking my nose?
Will it knock on my door in the morning,
Or tread in the bus on my toes?
Will it come like a change inthe weather?
Will its greeting be courteous or rough?
Will it alter my life altogether?
O tell me the truth about love.
The beauty of the musical saw echoes in the tunnels
and tugs away at the souls of strangers
until they find themselves at the foot of this hypnotizing lure;
it is the moment that a passerbys lonely journey briefly ends.
I am told that the thicker the metal; the better the sound.
Its notes play louder than the sadness that dampens these tunnels
because it is carried by the acoustics of coincidence.
here there are no stages; so there are no barriers.
This woman who plays it, lost her legs of dance years ago;
leaving her crawling through life.
The sound of defeat was never so loud;
but in despair she finally heard the pitch of life.
It came to her one day from the singing saw.
It was in a pub in a distant land where the music finally played.
This time it was louder than the echo of life's past tragedy,
but the old man who knew the secrets of the saw refused her lessons.
It was in this that her destiny was revealed.
She knew not a note and had no patience.
The saws she found were many and their notes out of tune;
but finally a singing saw that fit; & in a moment her search was over;
finally cutting through the doors shut so long ago.
It was the instrument of chance that she learned to play.
The vibrations of her saw ripple like a pebble in a pond,
and it sings with the voice of a guardian angel and
calms with the gentleness of God's hand.
It is why I tell you,
Listen to the woman with the singing saw,
and your spirit will hear it's music
even from the jagged edges of life on the longest day of winter.
As bodies fly in the nighttime sky
And ghostly pirates hunt for gold
The "Hussar" hoves into Hallet's Cove
With a spectral cargo in its hold
As "Slocum's" sirens wail its flaming cargo from Hell
When whirlpools churn, and the mist comes in
When you hear the quicksand moan and you feel alone
Do not run away,
©by Bob Singleton, Halloween 1999
* Hell Gate is the bridge at Astoria Park; Manhattan pirates crossed the river at night to
plunder the homes of the slumbering Queensites; the Hussar is a revolutionary war ship which
sank with 150 men on board including many American POWs; Hallet's Cove is near the Socrates
Sculpture Park in Astoria; General Slocum was a pleasure cruiser which caught on fire and ran
aground while carrying over 1000 women and children.
And the ghost's high noon casts a deathly spell
The sawlady witch plays an uncanny tune
While a black dog howls at the moon.
And electric eels fly in the nighttime sky
Spectral undead leave their bed
And search for bones left behind.
and you see a vampire with a xylophone
An eerie canoe paddles towards you
with dreamland spirits playing the didjeridoo
its all just play
for its the Hell Gate Kid
on holiday!
©by Janina Catherine Jayme, 2001
Now the oboe will whine like a baby
And the bassoon will growl like a bear
The fiddle will squeal for attention
And the trunpet will blatantly blare.
The piano may play only black notes
The string bass will just thump its chest
The drumsticks will clash with the cymbals
And the organ will drown out the rest.
But the saw? It just sits there all mellow
Plays sweet or plays blue - either way
And for kicks, it may stop playing music
Amd relax and saw wood for a day!
©by Ben Sweeney, Campbell, California
Both the saw and the bow I handle
Both belong to me
And when my hand is on the handle
The saw is all you see.
If you ever heard the saw I handle
Being sawed by me
You've seen the saw I saw
And you've heard the saw you see.
©by Jerold S. Meyer, North Lima, Ohio
I can't thank them with music when they are worn and tired...
I can't play a saw like"saw lady" for my talents are not busker or
hired...
So with artwork and display I give saws their just reward...
Hanging on a wall or sitting on someones's mantle board...
Play your saw "saw lady" make music once again...
I'll do my part with palette and brush till the music ends...
Then we can say we did our job in our own special way...
Awakening the beautiful sound of saws with a brand new day...
©by Janina Catherine Jayme, 2001
©by Janina Catherine Jayme, 2001
I am a boy again, in green New Hampshire,
Questing cattle at the end of day-
With staff in hand, I trudge the path of memory,
Walking barefoot down the thistly way
That winds through hardhack spires to spired spruces,
And far beyond the upper pasture bars.
Once, the cattle, moved by dumb perverseness,
Eluded me until the early stars
Wheeled above the silhouetted mountain
And night had put the younger world to bed.
My lusting shouting turned the cattle homeward
Behind the bell-cow swaying at their head.
My feet were blistered, but my heart was singing,
When we were greeted by the wary crew
Who were impervious to the brassy music
Which only a happy-hearted farm lad knew.
I shall always be grateful to the clanking
Of any cowbell underneath a star-
For me, its shower of intermittent music
Is more symphonic than an orchestra.
At night sometimes the clear bell spills
its melody among the darkend hills.
Patient and slow,
the cattle go,
day in, day out, among the flowers and the grass;
so all their summers and their autumns pass,
and always the tinkling cowbell's call
drifts from the meadow over the orchard wall.
Down from the rocky pastures
Slowly unhurried, as the sun sinks low,
Down the long lanes, half fenced with stone, half wire,
Westward the sun moves, and westward, westward,
On the little paths
Between outcrop and outcrop
Move the cows,
Slowly, in single file,
Unhurried, cropping
The well-cropped grass.
The leader wears a bell.
The cows come to the pasture bars and wait.
Slowly the cows move upward from the alders
Where they have browsed on grass that grows from mud.
The red-winged blackbirds fly up from the rushes,
the little snakes glide from the passing threat
Of those unhurrying hoofs. Pausing and browsing
the cows come to the pasture bars and wait.
The cows walk slowly, black and white, or brown
Darkening to soot, or brown and white, the cattle
Flow down the rocky streambeds of the farm lanes
Like quiet water flowing to a pool.
their bells strike an occasionalripplw sound of music
And then are still, among the brooding cows.
It shines upon the cattle moving slowly,
The world is full of cows forever pacing
Tranquilly in the light of a late sun,
Forever moving to a sound of cowbells
Drowsily waiting at a million barriers,
Placidly waiting for the night to come.
He gave them some goodwill
And plain common sense;
He blessed them with stories to tell of His glories!
Their humor and great skill
Would grace all events
Where bells were the reason they gathered in season...
And God called it good.
(...He wanted to show it,
This good work begun,
To all of His people, from tower to steeple,
So He made the poet
But then just for fun
He created a language with words like "rhythm" and "music" that don't
rhyme with anything, leading frustrated handbell poets to realize that
perfection is only achievable in Heaven...
And God understood. :-))
When I first put my hand upon a bell
I didn't know my life would change as well.
So innocent, they lay reflecting light,
Not one so much as hinting at the plight
Of hopeless addicts permanently bound,
Indentured to a lifetime filled with sound.L
How can these golden beauties be so fell?
And yet their fascinating habits tell
A tale of bell entrapment at first sight
(for ear and eye and hand a pure delight),
Of mental pleasures nowhere to be found
But deep within a score, in music drowned.
A wall divides what was from what can be
For each and every note is changing me.
Old Winter's joys are many; keen and bracing is his air,
Tracing forms of grace and beauty on the window-pane;
Yet when days begin to lengthen, and the twilight's shining fair,
I long to hear the tinkle of the cow-bells once again.
Jingle, jangle, throught the tangle
Of the bramble down the lane,
Shady trees and gentle breeeze,
Falling waters, breaking seas,-
How I long to hear the cow-bells once again!
Right merrily the sleigh-bells sound upon my ear to-night;
Up the river whirl the skaters, each bound first the goal to gain,
Each nerve with rapture tingles; -yet, for all the gay delight,
I long to hear the bell-cow browsing down the brook again.
Tinkle, tankle, round her ankle
Swirls the brooklet down the lane.
In the bush the hermit thrush
Sings his plaint so quaintly lush-
How I long to hear the cow-bells again!
When low the storm-cloud hovers, and the wind goes roaring past,
When patter on the window dashing, splashing, drops of rain,
Then hearth and light are cozy, but my heart cries out at last,
I long to wander where the cow-bells jangle once again!
Jangle, jingle, through the dingle
Sound the cow-bells up the lane.
Zephyrs blow and sweet springs flow,
O'er the sky the swallows go-
How I long to hear the cow-bells once again!
©by Charles Frederic Robinson, 1893
Henry David Thoreau, 1817-1862, American essayist, poet and naturalist
Thomas Hood, 1799-1845, English poet and humorist
English poet Robert Southey (1774-1843)
"Of all the devices which men have sought out for making a noise in the world, certainly bell-ringing is by far the most harmless."
attributed to J. E. Troyte c. 1870, founder of the Oxford University Society of Change Ringers in 1872
"Bells are music's
laughter."
"Great are the mysteries of bellringing, and this may be said in its praise:
that of all the devices that man has sought out for obtaining distinction by
making a noise in this world, bellringing is the most harmless."
Saw and Bells Poem in Hebrew
Adi Charlaf
A Poem for a Saw-Lady
Eyal Bat
In a beautiful garden
I saw a lady
yet she scram
and she scram:
"You are sawing the wrong lady!"
"Mylady", I responded
"You were seeing the wrong man..."
(from "Saw-Paw a tree")
©by Eyal Bat, 2002
Note: Eyal Bat is an Israeli composer. This poem is in the Brittish 'nonsence' stile.
I heard an angel's twang plied from a diabolical
instrument.
I heard an underwater harp's ondulating rhapsody, but
my senses deceived me. I saw a saw.
Now I know a siren doesn't sing. She slices.
I remain utterly distraught by the memory of such
subterrenean exctasy.
Have my ears peered into a crack in heaven or hell?
Please tell me you are an angel.
I saw the Saw Lady in Arkansas who can out saw any saw you saw. So if you see a saw that can out-saw the Saw Lady I saw, I'd like to see the saw you saw saw.
©by GrinfilledCelt, ROYAL OAK, MICHIGAN
the saw is just silvercolour and not colourfull
the feeling is so cold and cruel
but the sound is so warm and pureness from the cold saw
i could be allright my finger to getting bleed
if i got the possible to touch the saw which this beautiful saw lady named natalia plays beautiful sound with soul..
be pleasure and dropping what i feel about you in gratitude happily...
I saw a lady with a saw
What does this lady saw?
The crowds of people point and awe
When they see the lady with the saw
She sings the song, so sad and mellow
Heartbreaks all the young fellows
Remembrance of sadden times
When forests existed and not the saw
So now the saw has only its song
And a kindhearted lady who plays it alone
©by Heidi Younger, USA www.HeidiYounger.com
No longer walking
the straight & narrow,
no longer restricted to the harsh
amens of service,
now it’s your turn to be held still
for the sawing of some
effete bow, generations removed
from any kinship with arrows.
But you’re free!
And this song of yours
might otherwise
never have been heard.
You put your whole body
into it, still ascetic,
but now for the cause of art.
There’s a sweet spot, the street
musicians say, & they find it
in you. Where the heart might be,
systole & diastole in perfect balance,
if you were more than cartilage.
The pure tone floats up
through two octaves of rejoicing
at your deliverance
from lumber.
Or is this grief?
מנגינת מלאכים חרישית
עלתה מכר הדשא ההומה פרפרי זהב
כוכבים וחלומות..
אך ניחוח גללי הפרות
השיבני במהרה אל הקיבוץ
עת ידעתי טעמו המר
של חלב חמוץ..
©by bambagal 2003
יש האוהבים
© 2003 by אישיר
L'ame d'une Femme pleure en la Scie,
Pleurant une immense et Tendre Tristesse,
Et dans cette Plainte Melodieuse,
Chant Profond, Pathetique et Emouvant
©by Jocelyne Fournier
(מפורום ב-www.hydepark.co.il)
לא שוברים
את הכלים
ולא את
המסורת
ראו כמה קל לי
לנגן במסור מוסיקאלי
סלט פירות
ויש
פירות מסוכרים
אני הכי אוהבת
לנגן בפעמוני
פרות שירים
(מפורום ב-www.hydepark.co.il)
La Scie Musicale
Jocelyne Fournier
Et sa Sensibilite plaintive,
Penetre en moi comme Lame Incisive,
Toute enveloppee de Douceur aussi...
Elle ressemble aux Larmes de la Pluie
Qui effleurent la Rose et la caressent
Quand les Cieux sont tristes a l'Infini.
Qui dechire les Coeurs comme s'abiment
Les Petales de rose douloureuse.
Je sens d'une Infinie douceur l'Abime...
Qui me fait Contempler sous un Ciel sombre
La Rose en pleurs au Jardin languissant
Et l'Ame qui, dans le desespoir, sombre.
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