Irish poet Kerry Hardie has provided a text based on the nine figures of Picasso’s Guernica painting.
The poem is the basis for nine songs sung by Greek vocalist Savina Yannatou in Guy’s The Blue Shroud.

“Symbols of Guernica”

The bull is raging through the fields of myth,
his gored head stark above a darkened ground,
the ploughshares have been hammered into blades,
debris of battle smashed and scattered round.

The warrior sprawls, a shattered sword
held in his severed hand, his severed life
is blossoming inside death—a single flower
become the emblem of all fields of strife—

A wailing woman curses the high gods
who press the buttons that deliver slaughter.
Helpless, she lays her child across her lap
and keens this daughter who will know no daughter.

A blinded bird of hope finds no way through,
too dense the camouflage of lies and smoke,
a dove without an olive in its beak,
its form become an ugly cartoon joke.

And there the blade-pierced horse that trumpets pain,
its tongue a brutal  banner that’s unfurled
to rear and scream, a chaos of raw sound,
of noise that deafens in this silenced world.

The single bulb of torture keeps the faith,
wild theories drive the guns’ demented roar.
In cities now laid open to the sky,
unblinking, the relentless eye of war.

And though the light-bearer swoops close,
the lamp-of-home a steady fearless glow,
its flame can’t dim the torturer’s stark light,
nor penetrate the ruined world below,

where terrified, a woman stumbles through,
eyes lifted to a sky that roars and falls
onto her head in showers of rock and flame
and death-smoke hangs in oily blackened palls.

With arms upraised, a helpless figure drops,
the anguished head flung back in muted scream,
the ground beneath has given, nothing can halt
this ancient horror, this recurring dream.

I am joy, a weightless lark,

I rise like the spirit releasing.

I am in sunlight, wind and doubtful weather.

I crouch in a cat’s paw of grass.