The Earth Cried Out to the Sky
mezzo-soprano and piano
2022
Duration 11’
Instrumentation mezzo-soprano and piano [arr. mezzo-soprano and chamber orchestra]
First Performance 2 July 2022, 3pm, Kissinger Sommer, Bad Kissingen, Germany; Christina Daletska mezzo-soprano, Steffen Schleiermacher piano more info
Commissioned by Kompositionsauftrag des Kissinger Sommers, finanziert durch die Anton und Katharina Schick Stiftung
Further Performances
8.12.23 Kirchgasse 13, Zürich, Switzerland; Christina Daletska mezzo-soprano, Walter Prossnitz piano
2.5.24 New Voices Festival: First Unitarian Church of Brooklyn, 119 Pierrepont St. Brooklyn, NY 11201 US; Emily Triebold and Brent Funderburk – Brooklyn Art Song Society
Charlotte has a worldwide, exclusive publishing agreement with Birdsong
Purchase Materials
An old mulberry tree near Mariupol. . .
by Borys Humenyuk
An old mulberry tree near Mariupol
Has never seen so many boys in her life
Boys picking her fruit, boys dancing in the branches,
And the smallest boy climbing
To the very top.
RPGs, a machine gun, sniper rifles, helmets, bullet-proof vests
All laid carefully down.
The boys laughed, gave each other piggyback rides,
Smeared mulberry juice all over their faces
Sometimes on purpose — to look
like characters from Hollywood movies.
RPGs, a machine gun, sniper rifles, helmets, bullet-proof vests
All laid carefully down.
Beyond the horizon some mortars went to work
Making a funny noise: “one, two, three,” “one”
Like a young lover knocking on a girl’s window.
A flock of ravens rose into the sky with a shriek
But maybe those weren’t ravens, maybe
Those were airborne clumps of earth, tilled by the explosions.
The boys abandoned the old mulberry tree
Left it whirling in a solitary dance
Changed into grown men.
They sped off to assume their positions
Beyond the horizon, where the earth cried out to the sky
And the sky shook.
The old mulberry tree
Is waiting for her boys by the road
But nobody comes to pick her fruit.
It falls to the ground like bloody tears.
The grass that was pressed beneath
The RPGs, a machine gun, sniper rifles, helmets, bullet-proof vests
All straightened out.
And when the moon rises in the sky
The old mulberry tree
Gets on her tiptoes, like a girl
Tries to peek over the horizon
Where are you, boys?
Translated from the Ukrainian by
Oksana Maksymchuk and Max Rosochinsky
Latifa
by Ostap Slyvynsky
The kid asks, of course . . . He asks
when we will head back home.
And so one time I told him. I said: our house
was taken up to the sky. I don’t know
what I was thinking. I said:
our house was so good to us, Alim,
that it could not stand on earth anymore
like all other houses.
And it had so much love,
so many layers of love
we applied to the floor, the doors,
the window panes,
and as soon as the old love peeled off,
we would put on a new layer, even more diligently
and generously; ever brighter white and red
was the love we put on. Also, ivory-colored
love, although grandpa said that’s not real love,
just childish games. Because for love
a simple color should be enough.
All of this I say to myself, and to the kid
I say: yes, you could see nothing but
the sky from the windows now.
And angels too.
But there is no one home.
Because angels are not for the living to see.
Translated from the Ukrainian by Anton Tenser and Tatiana Filimonova