Owen Sheers - History lyrics

Lleder Valley, North Wales Don't try to learn this place in the pages of a history but go instead up to the disused quarry where the water lies still and black as oil and the only chiselling is that of the blackbird's song drilling its notes into the hillside's soil. And there, beside the falls of moss, pick yourself a blade of slate long as your arm, rusted, metallic in sound. Tap it with your heel, then with your fingertips at its leaves, gently prise it apart. And see how it becomes a book of slate in which you can read a story of stone - one that's written throughout this valley. in every head, across every heart and down the marrow of every bone.