when time was young clar mvt 2015-2-in_c

8/20/2019 When Time Was Young Clar Mvt 2015-2-In_C

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When Time was Young

for soprano, flute, clarinet, violin, and cello

Text byEdward Weismiller

Music byTom Flaherty



I.Be sure that the winter will come to the arbor,Expect that the leaves of the flowers will go(Less shining than summer's; leaving their ardor)Under, and over, and under the snow.Death is the strict completion of order:What we were taught, we know.

Summer's obscure, but winter is open;Summer's profuse, but winter is slowAnd clear and exact as a wave of the ocean:Up to that wave we go.

Why do you rise, with your face turned ashen?What do you still not know?

II.When Time was youngTime's wing was downed with snow,And snow hungLike a soft lock adrift down the white brow,The cold, untroubled brow-So let us sing our lives away.

When Time was young,Oh, then I did not dance,Wanting some breath of music from his tongue;Sunk in his glance:His measured, his unsearching glance-Still let us sing our lives away.

When Time was youngTime's step was light, and slow.My step halts now.But now his flight howls a tune down the eaves:Like sparrows in the leavesLet us dance, and s ing, our lives away.

III.Hell's somewhere; a gray honeycomb, that eachMay know by his own cell, exact, and furnished(Sparsely) with the cinders of all he loves.It is light there, or dark. From some centerA pulse curiously like that of a heart comesUnhurried, unhurried- it will be counted,And that continues history, that is experience,The counting: forever, with the sound of never.

But heaven, what is heaven? And where,End of what black trail frayed away by wind,Beyond what crest of space, dazzling at lastThe eyes, the heart-.

Nothing. Nowhere.Or if somewhere then all's an instant there,

Forever's instant. And who could tell,Who from so far could hear or listen forThat tick, when Time that has him by the handWill lead him strongly down a passagewayHe knows, into a space he knows, furnishedSparsely-and say,This is yours. I have brought everythingYou wanted. If you call. I shall be here.

IV.This day of sun and sound- this Sunday: willThe syllables of bells, the color, blue,Be clear as this, recalled when, still less stillThan now, the dusk falls, and all failures blow?This day dulls as I look: I look to loseMore, as more days darken and build me man:And build of flesh the ages of the rose;And build of bone the stages of the moon.

Thinking that all the world is less and lessLessens what I would be. What I would beIs strong- but strong is young, I would be, yes,I craze with time, that glass I shiver by!This day, this blaze of sound- bell-bright: so tall:Look up! But in that glass my eyelids fall.

V.All night the crickets plucked the familiar string, the strangenessOf moonlight sealed the stretched fields under spell,

and even strangers (pausing, puzzled, above some flowerthat should have fallen when they were young)muttered, I cannot with this older tonguetell you, nor at this hour,but such a face the world wore, I remember. Changed;or I do not remember well. -

All night the treetoads sang. The summer woodrose from its pond of shadow. The urging wind, the dragging moonrubbed leaves to shivering fire; and fire forsookthe shaken leaves Ash-gold. ash-gray, soot-black, the world moved between warm and cool.

And even friends, ending their bridge or conversationindoors, waited in doorways, watching the night unfoldin rigid golden light, and sighed, bewildered,

When we were children-oh, but the world was always a wildernesssurely, though seeming simple? How surely we grow old;how swiftly. But such the world was. Changed.-

All night the world said, It is the same.And friends, or strangers, said, We have climbed some stair,have closed some door, (in triumph) have known some to die!And the world said, You are what you were,I will show you what you were. And all said,friends, and strangers, No- no, it is changedbut if the same we cannot now remember,would not remember well, would not recallwhat the world was, or what we were, at all.

All night the wind plucked the familiar string;and the water sang, the watersang:

VI.Over and over,Flesh over bone,Wing upon windOn water on stone-

What made the music?Whose was the word?Was it the stone you heard?Water you heard?

Part Songby

Edward Weismiller



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when time was young clar mvt 2015-2-in_c

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