Water

by Gwendolyn MacEwen

When you think of it, water is everything. Or rather,
Water ventures into everything and becomes everything.
It has
All tastes and moods imaginable; water is history
And the end of the world is water also.
I have tasted water
From London to Miranshah. In France it tasted
Of Crusaders’ breastplates, swords, and tunnels of rings
On ladies’ fingers.
In the springs of Lebanon water had
No color, and was therefore all colors,
outside of Damascus
It disguised itself as snow and let itself be chopped
And spooned onto the stunned red grapes of summer.

For years I have defended water, even though I am told
there are other drinks.
Water will never lie to you, even when it insinuates itself
Into someone else’s territory. Water has style.

Water has no conscience and no shame; water
thrives on water, is self-quenching.
It often tastes of brine and ammonia, and always
Knows its way back home.

When you want to travel very far, do as the Bedouins do—
Drink to overflowing when you can,
and then
Go sparingly between wells.

The way spring jabs

by Ayesha Chatterjee

The way spring jabs at winter,
each small leaf a soldier, death
unthinkable. When the sickly honeysuckle
thrusts its brown vine into the air
no-one notices. Camouflaged,
it curls like clay, but stays.

Death is everywhere, napkined in snow.
So soft against the ear it must be a mistake.
Still, we carry on, imagination
shrinking with the rain, the coming warmth
a myth to be believed.

In a sort of synchronicity, people open doors
and close them, letting no-one in except themselves,
lifting alter-egos out of boxes tinged

with disappointment. It is just enough to hold on
to what is left as the first spiders skitter over tiles
and set their endless traps, sparkling every now and then with dross.

The Desert

by Gwendolyn MacEwen

Only God lives there in the seductive Nothing
That implodes into pure light. English makes Him
an ugly monosyllable, but Allah breathes
A fiery music from his tongue, ignites the sands,
invents a terrible love that is
The very name of pain.

The desert preserves Him
as the prophets found Him, massive and alone.
They went there, into that awful Zero
to interpret Him.,
for Himself to know, for He said: Help me,
I am the one who is alone, not you. Tell me who I am.

Camels lean into the desert, lost in some thought
so profound it can only be guessed. When
Will God invent man? When
will the great dream end?
My skin crawls with a horrible beauty in this
Nothingness, this Everything—

I fall to my knees in the deep white sand, and my head
implodes into pure light.

Spirit Tree

after Priscila Uppal

by Anna Yin

In Prospect Cemetery,
among poplar, cedar, maple,
I hope you found your tree–
a healing from heaven.

Here, in another city,
I see from my window
a full-grown willow–
ten years ago, it was a tiny twig
dropped in the valley.

Two years ago,
the year you passed, lightning
hit the willow and split her in two.
A year later,
from the open wound,
she grew new branches.

Have I found my spirit tree?
A breeze blows—new green leaves
touch me like a soft hand.

When winter comes,
I collect the fallen leaves,
slim, the shape of lips.
I slip them into books
of your poems.
They cling to one another,
a whispering forest of stories.

Songs of Joy

words from Psalm 126

When the Lord turned our gaze upon Zion, we thought we were dreaming.
Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with shouts of joy.
Fill us with grace, O Lord, like rivers in a dry land.
They who sow in tears shall reap with songs of joy.
Though they went out weeping, carrying the seed-bag, they shall return with songs of joy, carrying
their sheaves.

[There’s a back story to this. There was a composer named James Simon, which by chance are my first two names; he was German-Jewish from Berlin, like my mother. In 1944, at age 64, he was deported to Theresienstadt. There he wrote his last work, a setting of these words, Psalm 126. He was last seen sitting on his suitcase, jotting down music in his notebook, awaiting deportation to Auschwitz.]

Marigold

by A. F. Moritz

The shining of gold, dark
and blinding bright by turns,
the sun falling from blue clouds
into the ocean and noon and dawn,
all unfolded and held up,
carried, offered on motionless
petals, fingers, rays, unchanged
through all the day’s seasons
and the night under spectral
low-watted garden bulbs.

Unchanged, marigold, except you always
are born, flower, last, and decay,
and mummified, brown and stiff, stand
in the snowy mud, shedding seeds.

Mary’s gold, your flower primal
gold above and red gold underneath,
streaked with rust and blood,
earth ochre, stain of red clay,
knife wound, spike and spear thrust,
wrists tightly bound, thorns,
menses, a dripping scalpel line:
the seven sorrows, seven darts
that sum up all cuts
lopping the human parts away
perpetually: the darts that are your seeds,
that grow in, pierce, harrow,
fall from, and are, your heart.

For Aviva, Because I Love Her

by Irving Layton

I saw a spider eating a huge bee
First he ate my limbs
And then he removed my head
Feasting on the quivering jellies of my eyes
And on what passes among bees for ears

And, though dead,
I could feel with each morsel he had
That he enjoyed his repast
And I was glad

Afterwards, he sliced me down the middle
Exposing my insides to the burning midday heat

And slowly, the voluptuous spider feasted
On my jeweled organs,
Abolishing them one by one
Till I was all gone,
All swallowed up,
All except for my love of you

My radiant wings,
These, ah these he did not touch,
But left glinting in the sun.

Burning in this Midnight Dream

by Louise Bernice Halfe – Sky Dancer

I dream I wore a skin of X’s across my chest
and down my torso. Granny prints of the midnight world.
Thick lenses moved inside my skull
magnifying but still I could not see.
The X awkwardly signed by my great-grandmother
another burned ink onto my skin for Treaty Six.
X for the five-dollar-a-year allotment,
X stitched for medicine, eye glasses, teeth,
and for school.
X for every sin, X for moments of grace.
The X’s of a long paper chain wrapped this body.

The tattoos beckoned me not to surrender
to wear a grizzly cape
to dance until the sun’s flames and moon beams
created passion inside my womb.
I was earth, burning in this midnight dream.

Bombastic

by George Elliott Clarke

The problem is, I’m bombastic—
drastically bombastic,
due to the minstrelsy, buffoonery,
of being a yellowed, cartoon black,
a secondhand black,
a kind of discard, discounted black,
being really only tan or brown,
a souvenir of Miscegenation.

A signally colossal pygmy! A hunchbacked, Igbo Igor!
Talent worth less than a chigger-plagued pig—
Talent that’s only a figment
of my Pygmalion, gigolo vocab (itself not big)—

Alluding to my obligatory pigment,
my oil-crude, black-ass nib zigzags this white-sheet gig—
my squibs unniggardly, yet niggling—
see my mag-nagging Ego, jag and jig!

Always was I an ignoramus (like Cap’n Queeg)—meagre—
if eager to league as a worthy figure—the “Antigone
of Antigonish,” who ligatures together earthy swigs
of igneous-molten spittle, grammar-beleaguered!

I was less Zelig than Rigoletto: Unambiguous
roared the guffaws, as if lauding Follies Ziegfeld—
dervishes all whirligigs, in trigonal shindigs—
and applause—symphonic Edvard Grieg—contiguous.

What a stigma my Intrigue be! What ig’orant
and brazen Bigotry to vaunt “Negro rigs”
(these foul-spelled, triggering sprigs—
iffy schlock) to spiffy, bewigged, Prufrock-like prigs!

Asleep In Her Arms

by Stephen Morrissey

Isn’t this what I’ve waited for?
To sleep in her arms, return
to the warmth of a woman’s
body, curves and softness
against bone and flesh.
She is the one
I come to life in,
the woman whose
presence returns me to life.
There is no other
like her, the one I love:
the one who is my other half,
the one whose hand I hold,
the one whose company I desire,
the one who makes the moon
white and full.
I think of other men
alone at night; during the day
they search for a woman
to bring them light:
love transforms,
ignites an inner fire,
burns long and bright
in the human heart.
What makes the full moon
white and round
but love;
what makes the trees grow
and the fields green
with life,
only love;
or the river flow,
fish breaking the calm
surface at dusk,
sky red with setting sun
and grass cold
with dew.

Wound Turned To Light

by Andrea Thompson

The light of witnessing existence
makes everything beautiful again –

brings rebirth to those disowned parts of self
those shattered fragments the world has deemed

unworthy – those darkened days and tired nights
of soul-deep weariness become refreshed

through the act of simply
recording what is

what it is to be ourselves, unabashed and
naked, living on this crushed ball of stardust

what it is to be us – hurtling through the universe
bouncing up against each other like ideological pinballs

at a time when the polarity of this planet has sent us all
off on our own diametrical trajectory away from the core

when the weight of interpersonal animosity has become
staggeringly crippling, when the term “respectfully disagree”

is about to become extinct. In this moment I bow down
and thank God for bestowing us with the gift of creativity

for endowing all of us humans a life-giving method of release
to the pressures of simply existing, a way to translate pain

into beauty, a way to open up the valve on it all
and begin to let off steam –

what a gift it is to be given this
moment, to be invited to express

all the colours of this jagged emotional palette
without judgment, to simply say yes

to the raw red of rage, yes
to the yellow of hope, yes

to the bruised-hearted blues, yes
to the unfathomable purple, yes

yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes
yes and amen to it all.

[The title is inspired by Georges Braque, “Art is a wound turned into light”.]

v

by Amatoritsero Ede

this hung morning
the immobile weser
is sluggish with memories
of dead water
on the niger river delta
in nigeria

after shell shat shocked
oil impurities into it

till choked full of poisoned fish and algae
the creek reeks of dead fish and people

like the ogoni nine

a hung boat nation unable to swim
pollution and politics

and thus was strung short
and hung from killer nooses

the vertical nine were long dead
long before the long drop

by the life-stained hands
of abacha’s henchmen hangmen hitlerites

nine necks cracked
life’s spine popped
broken

nine lives shelled
the niger delta
shell-shocked into haunted silence

stifled wailing along waterways
and among mangrove swamp and fauna

muffled wailing
unlike the silence on the weser

a portentous silence
the quiet of still graves
sunk real deep

To the Poet

by George Elliott Clarke (from “Red”, 2011)

Poet! Damn you if you crave public love!
People clap raucously, then fickle, stop.
Fools don scholars’ tassels, bray their critiques,
While crowds’ hoorays chill—or scald—your marrow.
Best to stand Caesar-calm, statue-austere:
It’s majesty, yes, to dwell defiant,
Castled in your own soul, free and aloof!
Perfect your flowers, distill their dream liqueurs,
But ignore all praise of your past confections.
Judge for yourself your vineyard’s heady wine:
Your strict taste dictates its vintage sweetness!
Do you want joy? Let the pack bay and howl:
Let them snarl and spit on your altar’s flames
And breathe your temple’s triumphant perfumes!

Set me as a seal

from Song of Songs 8:6-7

Set me as a seal upon your heart,
as a seal upon your arm:
for love is strong as death.

Many waters cannot quench love,
nor can the rivers drown it.
If you gave all your wealth for love,
love would turn you down.

Set me as a seal upon your heart,
as a seal upon your arm:
for love is strong as death.

Phoenix (IV)

by Bänoo Zan

With locks of fire
and eyes of ice,

uttering eloquent silence,

disrobing me
of my habit,

Life
put a dagger
in my hands.

With lips labouring in love
and heart beating hate,

wrinkles young as yesterday
beauty old as news
and charisma alluring as pain–

stopping me–
out of the three–
with euphoric wisdom,

Life
put hemlock
in my hands.

With a face of stone
and hands of water,

her womb blossoming
and her breasts flowing,

her body aroused
and her spirit asleep,

Life
put Death
in my hands.

With a dagger in his heart
and hemlock on his lips,

philosophy in his groin
and passion in his brain,

silencing eloquent speech
with celestial song,

Death
put Life
in my hands.

For E. J. P.

by Leonard Cohen

I once believed a single line
in a Chinese poem could change
forever how blossoms fell
and that the moon itself climbed on
the grief of concise weeping men
to journey over cups of wine
I thought invasions were begun for crows
to pick at a skeleton
dynasties sown and spent
to serve the language of a fine lament
I thought governors ended their lives
as sweetly drunken monks
telling time by rain and candles
instructed by an insect’s pilgrimage
across the page—all this
so one might send an exile’s perfect letter
to an ancient hometown friend

I chose a lonely country
broke from love
scorned the fraternity of war
I polished my tongue against the pumice moon
floated my soul in cherry wine
a perfumed barge for the lords of memory
to languish on to drink to whisper out
their store of strength
as if beyond the mist along the shore
their girls their power still obeyed
like clocks wound for a thousand years
I waited until my tongue was sore

Brown petals wind like fire around my poems
I aimed them at the stars but
like rainbows they were bent
before they sawed the world in half
Who can trace the canyoned paths
cattle have carved out of time
wandering from meadowlands to feasts
Layer after layer of autumn leaves
are swept away
Something forgets us perfectly

And then a second dream

by Luciano Iacobelli

beached on my lawn where at night I cool my feet
(the small patch of grass miraculously stretched into a playing field)
was a decomposing whale
a stranded sublimity
an exiled size
a deleted portion of the sea’s magnitude
a proportion decommissioned by the universe
an evacuation of all the blessings ever bestowed on the animal
exited the blowhole
a swarm of fireflies

had I know the water would creep this far inland
I would have moved to higher ground
avoided the putrefaction
the meat and blubber decaying into cracked icons and baptismal font
broken pews and organ pipes

and one of the eyes was an altar strewn with ashes and playing chips
scattered decks with disintegrating suits
evidence of a game terminated long ago
a smell of loss in the air weighing down the atmosphere
a failed and final gamble

After the Love at Victoria Street

by Boyd Warren Chubbs

There’s a warm hand upon my head
This land and sea have given a hand to spread upon my head tonight
and I go down to the water to rock and sing of plentiful and certain things:
the rapid malt of spring and brooks;
trees that shook themselves furious;
curious phantoms upon the rain path;
lain passages of bone and earth;
birth of sundogs and lavender;
fogs more delicate than breath;
sweat from laughter and the spark and fire;
a beautiful liar tender among thieves;
sleeves of light climbing the berry hills;
sills handsome with paint and lace;
a trace of raw sienna in the swimming tickle;
a brace of storms, sermons upon the walking, talking trees, and all around, the fossil barrens, cairns above home; the purple-grey stone staring; foam with its clothes, rolling the near shore
and a door thinning where, in a mesh of voice and strings, love goes.

Prelude

by Astrid Brunner

she sees the roses wither
and fall petal by petal
into the ashes of her heart.

let us be friends
says mary magdalene.

she hears the stars whisper
and fall arrow by arrow
into the ashes of her heart.

let us be friends
says mary magdalene.

she feels the blood chant
and fall tear by tear
into the ashes of her heart.

let us be friends
says mary magdalene.

she knows the phoenix sleep
and fall red by gold by blue
into the ashes of her heart.

let us be friends
says mary magdalene.

she unfolds her hair
and waits patience by patience by patience
over the ashes of her heart.

let us be friends
says mary magdalene.

Minuet I

by Astrid Brunner

and although i want to go out into the snowstorm
to stand there naked
and to shout my love for you
into the white howling wind

i too can write a letter
with this and that
in it.

and although i want to go out into the snowstorm
to stand there naked
and to fly into your arms
through the white howling wind

i too can write a letter
with this and that
in it.

and although i want to ride into the snowstorm
to shake my mane there naked
and to ride into your body
laughing on horseback
at the white howling wind

i too can write a letter
with this and that
in it.

and although i want to ride into the snowstorm
to melt my body naked into yours
from the ice
i have turned into
mighty water
with the heat of my love

should the ice return to the snowstorm
to your eyes
to my naked body

i too can write a letter
with this and that
and a saint or two
in it.

Last Paddle

by Richard Sanger

Supper done and the August sun
about to go, the two of you
subtract yourselves from kitchen,
from dishes and grandchildren,
to take the blue canoe
out for one last paddle
round our summer sites,
these swimming rocks and heron swamps
north of Pointe-au-Baril.
There’s a lurch and a curse
as you embark, old antagonists
always ready to go
another round, to skirmish
as the canoe wobbles,
to spar over ancient foibles
or a loon that’s just popped up,
then laugh it off like drops
off a duck’s back, splish-splash,
resuming your old truce
with gentle, rhythmic strokes
and the laughter I hear echo
over the glowing water
as I stand and watch you go–
the two of you in silhouette
in the blue canoe, now black,
just an outline that merges into
the dark islands, their ragged skyline
of wind-tormented pines,
and re-emerges, as the sun
consumes itself behind,
yellow and orange and blazing red,
and the two of you paddle on,
paddle out towards the open,
the great big Georgian Bay—there,
there’s no troublesome strip
of earth to get in the way,
no horizon left to hold you back,
no more pain, or sorrow,
no ego, it’s all washed away
in mist, in this grey-white glow
the lake climbs right into the sky,
as I stand and watch you go,
your canoe just a speck
in the silver distance,
the whirls from your paddles
undoing, unspooling like thoughts,
or sentences trailing off
on the lake’s metallic surface
little galaxies that spin
and expend themselves
and vanish into the dark,
in which, having stood and watched
you subtract yourselves from us,
I see nothing but you gone–
you are the darkness you’ve left
and the evening’s first faint star.

Moon

by Choucri Paul Zemokhol

Moon, moon,
your soft steps in the velvet of night
circle my house,
you smile at me as I look out my window.

Moon, moon,
who knew me when I was young,
masquerading for me each night,
your veil slipping off so that I could see your honest face.

Moon, moon,
I am a crumb in the palm of your hand.
I feel your icy breath,
give me one last kiss.

Moon, moon,
I am coming to my last turns around your satin gown,
one tug upon your hem
and my bones dissolve.

Moon, moon,
I offer you my hand,
let us move through these nights like two old friends,
not knowing who conjured who.

Namesake

words by Giovanna Riccio

I can still see the oak floor
the teacher unrolling my r’s
clipping my name—Joan.

Joan? I don’t know if that blunt
one-syllable turned my head,
but everywhere English flattened Italian,
and when my father snipped
my impractical long hair, I looked away,
pretended those orphaned ringlets
belonged to someone else.

Blonde, blue-eyed goddesses
who never ate garlic filled the temples
of the Golden Book Encyclopedia,
the face of Ancient Rome
belonged to our teacher now,
but blinded statues in pictures, old sun
threaded in the cracks of fallen ruins
were calling me.

Later, my fingers clutched
the boarding pass, I remember the airplane
lifting me to a warm unknowing sleep,
sudden morning opening onto old stone,
July heat rusting on palm trees, wind cupped
in the umbrella pines and everywhere taxis.

I rode
back into my dusty body, into Rome’s
dusky fall echoing in the stone,

From the Italian stone
my numbed blood flowed naturally,
I heard my name calling from
the balcony, Giovanna
our old house-bound language, free
in the rowdy streets, songs we hummed
sottovoce singing at the top of their voices.

I rested, leaning
on the smoky marble’s mineral veins.

Impossible stone flowed
everywhere that summer,
familiar figures I had never seen before
gestured to me from the rooftops
and because I could accept the gesture
the blunt sounds softened,
my tongue, my bones, grew more porous
and the child I had locked away
flowed out of the hardness into my voice
and gave me my name.

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The song cycle has a vital place in Western music, but there are surprisingly few contemporary Canadian examples of the form. Moths (2013) continues my collaboration with author André Alexis, with whom I have talked of writing song cycles since we began to work together. He conjured up a cycle of six songs tracing the journey of a sleeper through night and dreams, from darkness to light, from the visceral to the ethereal.

Moths was commissioned by Canadian Art Song Project (Lawrence Wiliford and Steven Philcox, co-artistic directors) with the assistance of The Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.

Program Note: Joyce Songs (2009) by James Rolfe

words by James Joyce; for soprano, mezzo, tenor, baritone, and piano; duration ca. 15 minutes. The songs may be performed individually or in any combination, in any suitable order. Joyce Songs were commissioned by The Aldeburgh Connection (Stephen Ralls, Artistic Director) with the assistance of The Ontario Arts Council.

Song Texts

A Flower Given to My Daughter

Frail the white rose and frail are

Her hands that gave

Whose soul is sere and paler

Than time’s wan wave.

Rosefrail and fair– yet frailest

A wonder wild

In gentle eyes thou veilest,

My blueveined child.

I

Strings in the earth and air

Make music sweet;

Strings by the river where

The willows meet.

There’s music along the river

For Love wanders there,

Pale flowers on his mantle,

Dark leaves on his hair.

All softly playing,

With head to the music bent,

And fingers straying

Upon an instrument.

XI

Bid adieu, adieu, adieu,

Bid adieu to girlish days,

Happy Love is come to woo

Thee and woo thy girlish ways — –

The zone that doth become thee fair,

The snood upon thy yellow hair,

When thou hast heard his name upon

The bugles of the cherubim

Begin thou softly to unzone

Thy girlish bosom unto him

And softly to undo the snood

That is the sign of maidenhood.

XVI

O cool is the valley now

And there, love, will we go

For many a choir is singing now

Where Love did sometime go.

And hear you not the thrushes calling,

Calling us away?

O cool and pleasant is the valley

And there, love, will we stay.

XX

In the dark pine-wood

I would we lay,

In deep cool shadow

At noon of day.

How sweet to lie there,

Sweet to kiss,

Where the great pine-forest

Enaisled is!

Thy kiss descending

Sweeter were

With a soft tumult

Of thy hair.

O unto the pine-wood

At noon of day

Come with me now,

Sweet love, away.

XXVIII

Gentle lady, do not sing

Sad songs about the end of love;

Lay aside sadness and sing

How love that passes is enough.

Sing about the long deep sleep

Of lovers that are dead, and how

In the grave all love shall sleep:

Love is aweary now.

XXXV

All day I hear the noise of waters

Making moan,

Sad as the sea-bird is when, going

Forth alone,

He hears the winds cry to the water’s

Monotone.

The grey winds, the cold winds are blowing

Where I go.

I hear the noise of many waters

Far below.

All day, all night, I hear them flowing

To and fro.

XXXVI

I hear an army charging upon the land,

And the thunder of horses plunging, foam about their knees:

Arrogant, in black armour, behind them stand,

Disdaining the reins, with fluttering whips, the charioteers.

They cry unto the night their battle-name:

I moan in sleep when I hear afar their whirling laughter.

They cleave the gloom of dreams, a blinding flame,

Clanging, clanging upon the heart as upon an anvil.

They come shaking in triumph their long, green hair:

They come out of the sea and run shouting by the shore.

My heart, have you no wisdom thus to despair?

My love, my love, my love, why have you left me alone?

The songs of Illuminations reflect the extremes which so violently animate the poetry of Rimbaud. With beautiful and exquisitely constructed language, Rimbaud navigates poles of despair and exhilaration, love and misanthropy, purity and filth. In this world, romanticism and modernity are placed in a crucible where they react violently to one another, as if in an alchemical experiment, an image which constantly recurs in Rimbaud.

Since his death in 1892, Walt Whitman has become an unwitting collaborator for a steady stream of composers, myself included; four of these texts I have previously set, in 1990.  Despite its high romantic tone, Whitman’s verse remains palatable to our ears: the beauty of his language, his loving attention to its rhythm and sound, and his direct, unpretentious tone make him one of the most approachable of poets.  These songs are mostly from the earlier books of Leaves of Grass, verses which explore facets of desire, be they quiet, turbulent, or defiant.  In my earlier settings, I explored the texts more for sound than for meaning, but this time I have approached them more traditionally, as art songs, trying to hold up a musical mirror to their essences.

Six Songs were commissioned by Soundstreams (Lawrence Cherney, Artistic Director) through The Ontario Arts Council.

Six poems by Walt Whitman, from Leaves of Grass

I heard you solemn sweet pipes of the organ

I heard you solemn sweet pipes of the organ as last Sunday I pass’d the church,

Winds of Autumn, as I walk’d the woods at dusk I heard your long stretch’d sighs up above so mournful,

I heard the perfect Italian tenor singing at the opera, I heard the soprano in the midst of the quartet singing;

Heart of my love! You too I heard murmuring low through one of the wrists around my head,

Heard the pulse of you when all was still singing little bells last night under my ear.

Not heaving from my ribb’d breast only

Not heaving from my ribb’d breast only,

Not in sighs at night in rage dissatisfied with myself,

Not in those long-drawn, ill-supprest sighs,

Not in many an oath and promise broken,

Not in my wilful and savage soul’s volition,

Not in the subtle nourishment of the air,

Not in this beating and pounding at my temples and wrists,

Not in the curious systole and diastole within me which will one day cease,

Not in many a hungry wish told to the skies only,

Not in cries, laughter, defiances, thrown from me when alone far in the wilds,

Not in husky pantings through clench’d teeth,

Not in sounded and resounded words, chattering words, echoes, dead words,

Not in the murmurs of my dreams while I sleep,

Nor the other murmurs of these incredible dreams of every day,

Nor in the limbs and senses of my body that take you and dismiss you continually—not there,

Not in any or all of them O adhesiveness! O pulse of my life!

Need I that you exist and show yourself any more than in these songs.

O you whom I often and silently come

O you whom I often and silently come where you are that I may be with you,

As I walk by your side, or sit near, or remain in the same room with you,

Little you know the subtle electric fire that for your sake is playing within me.

Trickle drops

Trickle drops! my blue veins leaving!

O drops of me! trickle, slow drops,

Candid from me falling, drip, bleeding drops,

From wounds made to free you whence you were prison’d,

From my face, from my forehead and lips,

From my breast, from within where I was conceal’d, press forth red drops, confession drops,

Stain every page, stain every song I sing, every word I say, bloody drops,

Let them know your scarlet heat, let them glisten,

Saturate them with yourself all ashamed and wet,

Glow upon all I have written or shall write, bleeding drops,

Let it all be seen in your light, blushing drops.

One hour to madness and joy

One hour to madness and joy! O furious! O confine me not!

O to drink the mystic deliria deeper than any other man!

O savage and tender achings!

O to be yielded to you whoever you are, and you to be yielded to me in defiance of the world!

O to return to Paradise! O bashful and feminine!

O to draw you to me, to plant on you for the first time the lips of a determin’d woman.

O to speed where there is space enough and air enough at last!

To have the gag remov’d from one’s mouth!

To escape utterly from others’ anchors and holds!

To drive free! to love free! to dash reckless and dangerous!

To ascend, to leap to the heavens of the love indicated to me!

To rise thither with my inebriate soul!

To be lost if it must be so!

To feed the remainder of life with one hour of fulness and freedom!

With one brief hour of madness and joy.

A clear midnight

This is thy hour O soul, a free flight into the wordless,

Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,

Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best,

Night, sleep, death, and the stars.

These poems are contradictory in nature. Whitman speaks of intimate and personal feelings by magnifying them with grand turns of phrase, and metaphors embracing the eternal and the universal. The music, rather than mimicking the poet, seeks to distill the original emotions, and to let the words speak for themselves. The voice is reduced to a very restricted range, time is stretched to near-stillness, the accompaniment is full of silences. Complex random-number procedures were used to ensure that pitches and durations remained consistent and distinct; this gives the piano part a very traditional role, that of setting and maintaining the poems’ moods.