How the tenor warbles in April!
He thrushes, he nightingales, O he's a lark.
He cuts the cinquefoil into snippets
With his love's scissors in the shape of a stork.

Hear the alto's glissando, October.
She drapes blue air on her love's shoulders,
On his velvet jerkin the color of crows.
Her cape of felt & old pearls enfolds her.

How the baritone roots out in May!
His depths reach even the silence inside
The worms moving level, the worms moving up,
The pike plunging under the noisy tide.

Hear the soprano's vibrato, November,
Water surface trembles, cold in the troughs.
She transforms blowing hedges into fences,
She transforms scarlet leaves into moths.




Water
(from the long poem, For the Love of Gerald Finzi)

In whose motions children make dance,
I wish you had prepared me.
Water, in whose several bodies wanderers wash,
I wish you would heal me too.
Water, in whose extremes, of steam, of ice, pain forms,
Why didn't you cauterize, immobilize my infant heart?

Now, you had better warn your best friend, the earth,
Better warn each vessel made of earth or shaped like earth,
"This woman may well abandon you."
You should enlist the aid of your enemy, sun-fire, saying
"This woman half wants you to blind her, obscuring
All manifestations to which she cannot but cling."

Dear Water, How I wish you would gather yourself together and rise,
Gather yourself together with thunder and together
Overpower my sole lover, the air,
Commanding him:
"Send this woman this hour no barrier,
Rain on slurry-gray waves."




No. 10
(from the long poem, Series as Opposed to Sequence)

Of hills
Of washes
Of alluvial fans
Ledges of cliff and steep canyon walls
Late in May or in June
With a few scales
Floating down a river in very dark surroundings in complete darkness
Glissandos which with contact microphones attached
Resolved to put a plant of light in the last part
Between fascinated by the symmetry
Different from
The recipient
He sort of reaches out
A series of spasmodic jerks
The perfume is liberated in profusion