A CHILD IN NATURE (2012) These seven movements can be
performed individually or together
SATB Choir with Soprano Solo (from within choir)
Total Duration 16:00
Premiere performances: October 6, 7, 12, 13, 14 2012 The Esoterics, Eric Banks, director
Text by Robin Muir-Miller
1 The Child (SATB, S solo) - 3:30
2 The Bird (SATB, S solo) - 3:00
Don't see the audio player? Listen here.
3 The Cricket (TB, S solo) - 2:00
4 Spider's Web (SATB) - 1:00
5 Brown Jack (SA only) - 1:30
6 The Wind and the Song (SATB) - 2:00 Don't see the audio player? Listen here.
7 A Dark Glow About Me (SATB, S solo; or four melody instruments and S solo) - 3:30
* The order of poems has been changed for this setting. The original poetry cycle has them in the following order: Child, Bird, Brown Jack, Cricket, Spider, Wind/Song, Dark Glow.
TEXT (in the order used in this piece):
CHILD IN NATURE
Robin Muir-Miller
1 THE CHILD
All adrift
in the eddying air,
she wore the sun
like straws in her hair.
The world lay still
and sighed, so sweet
over the earth
was the brush of her feet.
And lilac petals
softly shed,
like the dropping
of tears on her head.
2 THE BIRD
Sun-ascending in a silvered spiral
came the song of the morning,
soft-filtered through the throat
of a bird; and, earth-bound,
I was sad, and heavy in my solitude.
Limpid the notes dropped
dew-clear through the still air
and spilled into my silence,
for I was alone with the sun,
and shaded was my sorrow.
But the sun saw him, and settled
on the spreading of his wing.
3 THE CRICKET
I have heard you
scintillating there,
at the edges of my dreams;
shivering,
a little spray,
a fountain-burst
cascading in the darkness;
a letting fall of brittle
needle-points of pain
to rend the fabric
of my sleep.
4 SPIDER'S WEB
Teased in the wind,
a sliver of light
swings, bright
as quicksilver,
dodging the path
of my glance.
What a dance
of derision!
When Nature laughs
her humour's bound
up fast around
that filament.
5 BROWN JACK
Green-slashed
in a kurrajong
a brown jack jeered,
cold eye shrewd-cocked;
cocked, too, the gun, feared
not, and warm wood-stocked
but cold, how hard-steel cold;
and hard my brown jack's eye
and as he jeered he told
me, crying, told me . . . Cry
no longer then, my brown-bird,
poor-jack, now my dead-jack,
for I think I heard
as plain as rifle crack
the pain of
pity in your song.
6 THE WIND AND THE SONG
Wind sings soft
in idle sift
through drift of days;
stillness drops
in darkness drapes
of silence; dies
the calm, and wind's
uncouthness wounds.
Death-sound, hurt
for the hot heart,
fire for living clay;
the vibrant air's
aflame; the ears
would birth-songs cloy
should there be dearth
of songs of death.
7 A DARK GLOW ABOUT ME
A dark glow about me . . .
Should I feel it grow
paler as the shadows
of the day grow paler
at the first hush of night,
and as the lucent shallows
lighten in the lifting
back-wash of the shifting sea —
then will I know
that the twilight ends
in darkness, and the shore
slips forever under the sea.