Program Notes

Falling for Mezzo Soprano and Orchestra (or Piano)

I. At midday
II. Lord, what are the sins
III. Wind shakes the latch
IV. Now the sun

Martin Bresnick's Falling (1993-94) is a song cycle based on two poems of Kathryn Stripling Byer, "Snowbird" and "Lost Soul", and David Bottoms' longer three part poem "In a U-Haul North of Damascus". These three poems have been arranged to form a four movement narrative of conflict, separation, and the possibility of consolation and renewal.

High in the Georgia mountains a woman reflects on the unkept promises of her lover. He has left her, heading south through the darkness. He pauses just north of Damascus at a truck stop and ruefully recalls 'the sins I have tried to leave behind me.' Later that night she imagines he may yet return, but knows better than to respond 'when the wind shakes the latch on my door like a summons.' In the following early morning, as 'light is falling through the windows of my half-empty house,' he asks 'is it possible to fall toward grace?'

At Midday

At midday you steadied our boat on the riverbank,
pointing your rifle to some snowy height.
"I will build you a house there," you promised.
I thought I saw sun on my windows,
the flash of a silver bird's wing. Can a bird
sing like ice melting? I never heard him.

Perhaps even now in the darkness he glows
like the light I left burning.
Sometimes he flies over me. I never look up
into sky when I walk through the woods

for it's ginseng and bloodroot
a woman must take home, not feathers
to melt in her hands, little more
than sweat after labor.

Someday I will not think again about lace
or the earrings you fondled with cold fingers.
I will forget water under our boat, how the rocks sang
like birds heading south.

Lord, What are the Sins

Lord, what are the sins
I have tried to leave behind me? The bad checks,
the workless days, the scotch bottles thrown across the fence
and into the woods, the cruelty of silence,
the cruelty of lies, the jealousy,
the indifference?

What are these on the scale of sin
or failure
that they should follow me through the streets of Columbus,
the moon-streaked fields between Benevolence
and Cuthbert where dwarfed cotton sparkles like pearls
on the shoulders of the road. What are these
that they should find me half-lost,
sick and sleepless
behind the wheel of this U-Haul truck parked in a field on Georgia 45
a few miles north of Damascus,
some makeshift rest stop for eighteen wheelers
where the long white arms of oaks slap across trailers
and headlights glare all night through a wall of pines?

What was I thinking, Lord?
That for once I'd be in the driver's seat, a firm grip
on direction?

So the jon boat muscled up the ramp,
the Johnson outboard, the bent frame of the wrecked Harley
chained for so long to the backyard fence,
the scarred desk, the bookcases and books,
the mattress and box springs,
a broken turntable, a Pioneer amp, a pair
of three-way speakers, everything mine
I intend to keep. Everything else abandon.

But on the road from one state
to another, what is left behind nags back through the distance,
a last word rising to a scream, a salad bowl
shattering against a kitchen cabinet, china barbs
spiking my heel, blood trailed across the cream linoleum
like the bedsheet that morning long ago
just before I watched the future miscarried.

Jesus, could the irony be
that suffering forms a stronger bond than love?

Wind Shakes the Latch

Wind shakes the latch on my door
as if someone is knocking.
I stand at the sink my hands cold

from the clothes I have washed.
On the line they are tossed like lost souls,
and when wind shakes the latch on my door

like a summons, I shut my eyes.
Nightgowns float over the toolshed.
I stand at the sink, my hands cold

and do not fetch them home.
I know better than to walk down this mountain
when wind shakes the latch on my door

as if someone is knocking indeed.
Have I no aid against solitude?
Must I stand at the sink, my hands cold

when I might strike a match to dry kindling?
The shape of my kettle's a comfort
when wind shakes the latch on my door.
Yet I stand at the sink, my hands cold.

Now the Sun

Now the sun streaks
the windshield with yellow and orange, heavy beads
of light drawing highways in the dew-cover.
I roll down the window and breathe the pine-air,
the after-scent of rain, and the far-off smell
of asphalt and diesel fumes.

But mostly pine and rain
as though the world really could be clean again.

Somewhere behind me,
miles behind me on a two-lane that streaks down
across Georgia, light is falling
through the windows of my half-empty house.
Lord, why am I thinking about this? And why should I care
so long after everything has fallen
to pain that the woman sleeping there should be sleeping alone?
Could I be just another sinner, blinded
before he can see? Lord, is it possible to fall
toward grace? Could I be moved
to believe in new beginnings? Could I be moved?