She Who Knows Strange Songs

A song cycle for mezzo-soprano, violin and violoncello
By Anne Cawrse (2024)
  
1. In My Mind
 
There's in my mind a woman
of innocence, unadorned but
 
fair-featured and smelling of
apples or grass. She wears
 
a utopian smock or shift, her hair
is light brown and smooth, and she
 
is kind and very clean without
ostentation-
 
but she has
no imagination
 
And there's a
turbulent moon-ridden girl
 
or old woman, or both,
dressed in opals and rags, feathers
 
and torn taffeta, who knows strange songs
 
but she is not kind.
 
-Denise Levertov (1923-1997)
Pub. New Directions Publishing. Used with Permission
 
  
2. Fragment 105(a)
 
You: an Achilles' apple
Blushing sweet on a high branch
At the tip of the tallest tree.
You escaped those who would pluck
your fruit.
Not that they didn't try. No,
They could not forget you
Poised beyond their reach
 
-Sappho (C.610 B.C. - C.570 B.C.)


3. Opal
 
You are ice and fire,
The touch of you burns my hands like snow.
You are cold and flame.
You are the crimson of amaryllis,
The silver of moon-touched magnolias.
When I am with you,
My heart is a frozen pond
Gleaming with agitated torches.
 
-Amy Lowell (1874-1925)
 
  
4. Prophecy
 
I shall die hidden in a hut
In the middle of an alder wood,
With the back door blind and bolted shut,
And the front door locked for good.
 
I shall lie folded like a saint,
Lapped in a scented linen sheet,
On a bedstead striped with bright-blue paint,
Narrow and cold and neat.
 
The midnight will be glassy black
Behind the panes, with wind about
To set his mouth against a crack
And blow the candle out.
 
-Elinor Wylie (1885-1928)