07 July 2020

Music Among Friends

The point is not to take the world’s opinion as a guiding star, but to go one’s way in life and work unflinchingly, neither depressed by failure nor seduced by applause.
— Gustav Mahler
A soprano friend via Triad, Janet Ross, was looking for pieces for soprano and flute, so I offered to write one.  Keeping my friend Peter Bloom in mind, I thought I wanted to write for soprano and alto flute, and I asked yet another friend, Leo Schulte if he had a likely poem;  well, he wrote one:

Thus moaned the soil:
My life, my life, my life,
A mass of desire
In a priestless church,
A smile of despair
In a cloud-choked face,
A gasp of adieu
In an unknelled box.   

Thus cried the fire:
My life, my life, my life,
Growing and thinking and warming,
Gilded and hated,
Warming and yearning and fading,
Useful and useless,
Fading and yearning and fading,
With a yearning heart.

Thus sighed the air:
My life, my life, my life,
A wave in a sea
With a too-far shore,
A clock in a world
With a time-free sky,
A grain in a dune
With a boundless mind.


Thus sang the sea:
My life, my life, my life,
Dreaming and birthing and storming,
Frozen and cobbled,
Storming and healing and playing,
Lovelorn and Love-filled,
Playing and healing and playing,
In the healing soul.

No comments:

Post a Comment