Aubade

"Aubade" is the fourth song from the song cycle The Seven Ages by composer John Harbison with text derived from the poetry of Louise Glück. The song cycle is for mezzo soprano, flute, clarinet, violin, violoncello and vibraphone.

Date: 2007Composer: John HarbisonText: Louise GlückSong Collection: The Seven Ages

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Text

The world was very large. Then
the world was small. O
very small, small enough
to fit in a brain.

It had no color, it was all
interior space: nothing
got in or out. But time
seeped in anyway, that
was the tragic dimension.

I took time very seriously in those years,
if I remember accurately.

A room with a chair, a window.
A small window, filled with the patterns light makes.
In its emptiness the world

was whole always, not
a chip of something, with
the self at the center.

And at the center of the self,
grief I thought I couldn’t survive.

A room with a bed, a table. Flashes
of light on the naked surfaces.

I had two desires: desire
to be safe and desire to feel. As though

the world were making
a decision against white
because it disdained potential
and wanted in its place substance:

panels
of gold where the light struck.
In the window, reddish
leaves of the copper beech tree.

Out of the stasis, facts, objects
blurred or knitted together: somewhere

time stirring, time
crying to be touched, to be
palpable,

the polished wood
shimmering with distinctions–

and then I was once more
a child in the presence of riches
and I didn’t know what the riches were made of.

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