Final Notes

Helicon's dress rehearsal of Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht with Vera Beths, Mark Steinberg, Myron Lutzke, Dov Scheindlin, David Cerutti, & Nina Lee just finished, all shimmering D Major on 24 guts strings. It was one of the finest performances I have ever heard. And as it happens, this will be the last music performed in The Studio, 27 West 67th Street. Albert Fuller would have loved it. Seven months; it's hard to believe he's really gone, but tonight as final notes dissipated into radiant silence I felt him slip into his own bright, clear night.

Waking, I Always Waked You Awake, by Jean Garrigue

Waking, I always waked you awake
As always I fell from the ledge of your arms
Into the soft sand and silt of sleep
Permitted by you awake, with your arms firm.

Waking, always I waked immediately
To the face you were when I was off sleeping,
Ribboned with sea weed or running with deer
In a valentine country of swans in the door.

Waking, always waked to the tasting of dew
As if my sleep issued tears for its loving
Waking, always waked, swimming from foam
Breathing from mountains clad in a cloud.

As waking, always waked in the health of your eyes,
Curled your leaf hair, uncovered your hands,
Good morning like birds in an innocence
Wild as the Indies we ever first found.