Performances:
December 8, 2024- Performed as part of Spectra Concert Series
Los Angeles, CA
May 15, 2024- Schoenberg Concert Hall at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music
Los Angeles, CA
Carmen Edano, voice
Alexandre Tchaykov, piano
Recorded as part of Alexandre’s DMA recital
I. Going Back
What is lost
Seems scattered in detail
I only now begin to feel –
This field layers light
Like sun fabrics, threads
In which I see
And unsee. I sew
Memory on a web
And watch it fly.
II. Lines
After so many miles of babbling green
Who could have guessed – firs, in near perfect rows,
Uneven enough for notice, and untouched!
It was decided: here I would stop
To watch them steer the hours.
Perhaps light, or the impact of a jay –
Something would spool the xylem that quick,
Before you knew what was being directed,
And then there’s only the splendor
Of gathering. Selecting a row,
You stick a hand in rootage or declare
Futility; you enter or observe
A shadow’s width on a whim,
The faint, lovely hum of a moment.
III. Graven Images
The entire day was spent
Somewhat oddly in the company of graves,
Their stones like jagged sea relics
Projecting into dark purple currents,
Quite impermeable to sound.
At the sight or lack of light, they rise
Without an invocation spell,
Fine-featured to the point of loss,
Sheer abandoned statuettes.
You can see where edges and ears
Were chiseled, chipped off in spite
By careful instruments of life;
Where heads now soaked in vegetative stun
Leapt from the mausoleum glass
And became nameless as elements
Repositioned in skeletal silence.
IV. Fragment
I wondered how long
A bird could stay
Enclosed in airy speech
And diminished day.
V. This Spring
We watch each other.
Like two accustomed to what
The season entails – bloom
Of identity, as it slips,
Pistol to pistil.
These fragmentary hours
Have chilled the eye
And made me wish to speak
What I can never know,
To roll and strum this breath –
Lifelike, in a cell, or gusted
Round the eve, we sing
In fleeting counterpoint.