​Extract from Kae Tempest, 'People's Faces', in The Book of Traps and Lessons​, track 11.
Image from Imogen McBeath, Memory Of A Body, contemporary dance solo.
To read Kae Tempest's People's Faces in full, scroll down the page.
To see Memory Of A Body, Imogen McBeath's beautiful 4 minute dance solo, set to Kae Tempest reading People's Faces, click play, below.

Imogen McBeath, Dancer, Choreographer and film Director,
​Charlotte Wheater, Camera and Editor 


​People’s Faces
 
It’s coming to pass, my country’s coming apart.
The whole thing’s becoming such a bumbling farce.
Was that a pivotal historical moment we just went stumbling past?
Well, here we are, dancing in the rumbling dark,
So come a little closer. Give me something to grasp.
Give me your beautiful, crumbling heart.
Another disaster, catharsis,
Another half-discarded mirage, another mask slips.
I face off with the physical.
My head’s ringing from the love of the stars.
There is too much pretence here.
And too much depends on the fragile wages
And extortionate rents here.
We’re working every dread day that is given us,
feeling like the person people meat really isn’t us.
Like we’re gonna buckle underneath the trouble,
Like any minute now the struggle’s gonna finish us.
And then we smile at all our friends.
 
It’s hard.
We’ve got our heads down and our hackles up,
our backs against the wall. I can feel you aching.
None of this was written in stone.
There is nothing we’re forbidden to know
and I can feel things changing.
Even when I’m weak and I’m breaking
I’ll stand weeping at the train station
‘Cause I can see your faces.
There is so much peace to be found in people’s faces.
 
I saw it roaring,
I felt it clawing at my clothes like a grieving friend.
It said there are no new beginnings
until everybody sees that the old ways need to end.
But it’s hard to accept that we’re all one and the same flesh
given the rampant divisions between oppressor and oppressed.
But we are, though.
More empathy, less greed, more respect.
All I’ve got to say has already been said.
I mean, you head it from yourself
When you were lying in your bed and couldn’t sleep,
Thinking ‘Couldn’t we be doing this differently?’
I’m listening to every little whisper in the distance singing hymns
and I can, I can feel things changing.
 
But it’s so hard.
We’ve got our heads down and our hackle up,
our backs against the wall –
I can feel your heart Racing.
None of this was written in stone,
The currents fast but the river moves slow
and I can feel things changing
Even when I’m weak and I’m breaking
I stand weeping at the train station
‘Cause I can see your faces.
There is so much peace to be found in people’s faces.
 
It's not enough
To imagine we'll be happy when we've got enough stuff.
All this stuff is blocking us
I'm neat with no chaser
I'm all spirit, but I'm sinking
'Cause the days are not days but strange symptoms
And this age is our age.
But our age is rage sinking to beige
And yes, our children are brave
But their mission is vague.
Now I don't have the answers
But there are still things to say
I stare out at my city on another difficult day
And I scream inwardly, "When will this change?"
I'm beginning to fade
But my sanity's saved 'cause I can see your faces.
I love people’s faces.
Kae Tempest, The Book of Traps and Lessons,
track 11, released 114th June, 2019.