Heaven's Birds:
Lament and Song

for mezzo-soprano soloist, SATB chorus, string trio, and piano (2008)

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Duration: 16 minutes

Text: English

A collage by the composer from the poems "Lament," "Two Loves," and "Lament and Song" by Jeffery Beam published in The Beautiful Tendons: Uncollected Queer Poems 1969-2007, White Crane Books, Brooklyn, NY, 2008.

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Premiere:

Michelle Vachon, mezzo-soprano & Anthology

Alistair Leon Kok, violin; Jessica Dunn, viola;
John Bumstead, cello; James Busby, piano

Arlington Street Church
December 1st, 2008

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Movements:

1. Introduction
2. I could not say it then
3. Past white past water
4. There was a man

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Text:

I could not say it then.

I cannot say it now.

My heart split in two.
A tree limb weighted by ice.
A white          quiet and protective.
A white          dangerously warm.
My hands spiritless in the drifts.

Why do birds continue to sing?

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Past white past water
past the last word from your tongue
past the altered rhythm of your speaking
we come
Before darkness before fire
before the simple angel of the young
before the field of lilies and
the birds of fields
we come

You go from me                        Past the simple angel of the young
You go off with my life              past the field of lilies

past the early and the deep

With the perfume odor from your wrists
a pendant around my neck
you go from me                        before white before water

before the last word from your tongue
to us love came and to our love
did come

There was a man whose coppery voice
anguished and exalted me.
Who left his words hanging in the air—
deadly delirious smoke.

Where is he now?

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Heaven’s hounds guard your ashes now
Shine their green light
on a humbled earth

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For every gray stone
alive with moss and left
unturned by your kind feet
Heaven’s birds sing

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Heaven knows somebody
hears those birds

For every gray stone
alive with moss and left
unturned by your kind feet
Heaven’s birds sing