Soprano, Flute (doubling Alto Flute and Piccolo), Clarinet (doubling Bass Clarinet), Violin, Violoncello and Piano
Texts: Poems by Archibald MacLeish, Louise Glück, Denise Levertov, and Louise Bogan
Duration: ca. 15 minutes
Publisher: C. F. Peters Corporation, Edition Peters 67485
Water is heavy silver over stone.
Water is heavy silver over stone’s
Refusal. It does not fall. It fills. It flows
Every crevice, every fault of the stone,
Every hollow. River does not run.
River presses its heavy silver self
Down into stone and stone refuses.
From Archibald MacLeish, New and Collected Poems (1976). Used by permission of Houghton Mifflin Co.
That body lying beside me like obedient stone–
once its eyes seemed to be opening,
we could have spoken.
At that time it was winter already.
By day the sun rose in its helmet of fire
and at night also, mirrored in the moon.
Its light passed over us freely,
as though we had lain down
in order to leave no shadows,
only these two shallow dents in the snow.
How long did we lie there
as, arm in arm in their cloaks of feathers,
the gods came down from the mountain we built for them?
From Louise Glück, Descending Figure (Ecco Press, 1980). Reprinted by permission.
He says the waves in the ship’s wake
are like stones rolling away.
I don’t see it that way.
But I see the mountain turning,
turning away its face as the ship
takes us away.
From Poetry (New Directions Publishing Corporation). Used with permission of the publisher.
A woman exposed as rock
has this advantage:
she controls the harbor.
Ultimately, men appear,
weary of the open.
So terminates, they feel,
a story. In the beginning,
longing. At the end, joy.
In the middle, tedium.
In time, the young wife
naturally hardens. Drifting
from her side, in imagination,
the man returns not to a drudge,
but to the goddess he projects.
On a hill, the armless figure
welcomes the delinquent boat,
her thighs cemented shut,
barring the fault in the rock.
From Louise Glück, Descending Figure (Ecco Press, 1980). Reprinted by permission.
The cold remote islands
And the blue estuaries
Where what breathes, breathes
The restless wind of the inlets,
And what drinks, drinks
The incoming tide;
Where shell and weed
Wait upon the salt wash of the sea,
And the clear nights of stars
Swing their lights westward
to set behind the land;
Where the pulse clinging to the rocks
Renews itself forever;
Where, again on cloudless nights,
the water reflects
the firmament’s partial setting;
–O remember
In your narrowing dark hours
That more things move
Than blood in the heart.
From The Blue Estuaries (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc., 1962, 1968). Used with permission of the publisher.