I fell in love with the beautiful poetry of Linda Pastan after reading Carnival Evening, her collection of new and selected poems published in 1998. From this wonderful collection, I chose four poems to make up this set: 1) “The Dogwoods” – a meditation on the nature of beauty and its immense power; 2) “Because” – Pastan looking back on the various unpredictable factors that led her to say “yes” to her husband many years before; 3) “Go Gently” – the poet seeing the pain that her dying father is experiencing, and her longing to tell him to let go of life; and 4) “Anna at 18 months” – watching with delight as a toddler begins to acquire the miracle of language.  It was a delight as a composer to give music to these deeply expressive poems.

The Dogwoods

I remember, in the week
of the dogwoods, why sometimes
we give up everything
for beauty, lose our sense
and our senses, as we do now
for these blossoms, sprinkled
like salt through the dark woods.
And like the story of pheasants
with salt on their tails
to tame them,
look how we are made helpless
by a brief explosion
of petals
one week in April.

Because

Because the night you asked me,
the small scar of the quarter moon
had healed-the moon was whole again;
because life seemed so short;
because life stretched before me
like the darkened halls of nightmare;
because I knew exactly what I wanted;
because I knew exactly nothing;
because I shed my childhood with my clothes-
they both had years of wear left in them;
because your eyes were darker than my father’s;
because my father said I could do better;
because I wanted badly to say no;
because Stanley Kowalski shouted “Stella”:
because you were a door I could slam shut;
because endings are written before beginnings;
because I knew that after twenty years
you’d bring the plants inside for winter
and make a garden we’d sleep in naked;
because I had free will;
because everything is ordained;
I said yes.

Go Gentle

You have grown wings of pain
and flap around the bed like a wounded gull
calling for water, calling for tea, for grapes
whose skins you cannot penetrate.
Remember when you taught me
how to swim?  Let go, you said,
the lake will hold you up.
I long to say, Father let go
and death will hold you up.
Outside the fall goes on without us.
How easily the leaves give in,
I hear them on the last breath of wind,
passing this disappearing place.

Anna at 18 Months

Just as it did
for Eve,
language comes
tumbling in, word
by parroted word
as the world
is named again–
each beast and plant,
each bird.
For the floodgates
are open wide
and out of her dauntless
mouth spill
rough-hewn syllables
for elbow, eyes,
for chin.
And touched
by the wand
of the word, roused
from the alphabet’s sleep,
new thoughts flutter awake
like butterflies utterly
changed,
like her damp flirtatious
lashes, beating
their tiny wings.

The premiere of The Dogwoods was given by Adelaide Muir, soprano, and Kent Conrad, piano, in Champaign, IL in April, 2006.