Wheeling Past the Stars (2007) 23'

Song Cycle of settings of poems by Rabindranath Tagore (trans. William Radice)

Orchestration: Soprano and Violoncello

Commissioned by Südwestrundfunk, Stuttgart

First performance

7 November, 2007
Patricia Rozario and Rohan de Saram
Stuttgart

"The music had a quiet sumptuousness, the vocal lines beautifully drawn out, the accompaniment sweetly harmonious, de Saram’s double-stopping as mellifluous as the singing." - Paul Driver, The Sunday Times 20 July 2008

Dedicated to Patricia Rozario and Rohan de Saram

I. Unending Love

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times,
In life after life, in age after age forever.
My spell-bound heart has made and re-made the necklace of songs
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms
In life after life, in age after age forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, its age-old pain,
Its ancient tale of being apart or together,
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge
Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time;
You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount
At the heart of time love of one for another.
We have played alongside millions of lovers, shared in the same
Shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell —
Old love, but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you,
The love of all man’s days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life,
The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours —
And the songs of every poet past and forever.

 

II. Palm-tree

Palm tree:    single-legged giant,
                  topping the other trees,
                     peering at the firmament –
It longs        to pierce the black cloud-ceiling
                  and fly away, away,
                    if only it had wings.

The tree     seems to express its wish
                 in the tossing of its head:
                   its fronds heave and swish –
It thinks,    Maybe my leaves are feathers,
                and nothing stops me now
                   from rising on their flutter.

All day      the fronds on the windblown tree
               soar and flap and shudder
                 as though it thinks it can fly,
As though it wanders in the skies,
               travelling who knows where,
                 wheeling past the stars –

And then   as soon as the wind dies down,
               the fronds subside, subside:
                 the mind of the tree returns
To earth,  recalls that earth is its mother:
              and then it likes once more
                 its earthly corner.

 

III. Grandfather’s Holiday

Blue sky, paddy fields, grandchild’s play,
Deep ponds, diving-stage, child’s holiday;
Tree shade, barn corners, catch-me-if-you-dare,
Undergrowth, pârul-bushes, life without care.
Green paddy all a-quiver, hopeful as a child,
Child prancing, river dancing, waves running wild.

Bespectacled grandfather old man am I,
Trapped in my work like a spiderwebbed fly,
Your games are my games, my proxy holiday,
Your laugh the sweetest music I shall ever play.
Your joy is mine, my mischief in your eyes,
Your delight the country where my freedom lies.

Autumn sailing in, now, steered by your play,
Bringing white siuli-flowers to grace your holiday.
Pleasure of the chilly air tingling me at night,
Blown from Himâlaya on the breeze of your delight.
Dawn in Âsvin, flower-forcing roseate sun,
Dressed in the colours of a grandchild’s fun.

Flood my study with your leaps and your capers,
Work gone, books flying, avalanche of papers.
Arms round my neck, in my lap bounce thump –
Hurricane of freedom in my heart as you jump.
Who has taught you, how he does it, I shall never know –
You’re the one who teaches me to let myself go.

 

IV. New Birth

          New deliverer –
  The new age eagerly looks
       To the path of your coming.
What message have you brought
  To the world? In the mortal arena
What seat has been prepared for you?
            What new form of address
        Have you brought to be used
In the quest for the sacred in humankind?
            What song of heaven
       Have you heard before coming?
  What great weapon for the fighting of evil
Have you placed in the quiver, bound to the waist
             Of the young warrior?
Will you, perhaps, where a tide of blood besmirches your path,
       Where there is malice and discord,
           Construct a dam of peace,
      A place of meeting and pilgrimage?
Who can say if etched on your forehead
               Is the secret mark
     Of the triumph of some great striving?
   Today we search for your unwritten name:
         You seem to be just off the stage,
       Like an imminent star of morning.
           Infants bring again and again
              A message of reassurance –
   They seem to promise deliverance, light, dawn.

[From RABINDRANATH TAGORE: SELECTED POEMS, translated by William Radice (Penguin, 1985) Copyright © William Radice, 1985. Used by permission of Penguin Books Ltd.]

Links:
Patricia Rozario
Rohan de Saram
William Radice
http://www.penguin.co.uk

 

 

Language: English (translated from the original in Bengali)

Scores and information available directly from Param Vir.

See also:

• Darbar Chhayanat (2010)
• Ultimate words: Infinite song (1997)

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last updated: June 15, 2010 [13:11:40]