Symphony No. 9

Time unseen time our continuing fiction
however we tell it eludes our dear hope and our reason
that is a pure condition of the story
and wherever our parents came from is another century
an age which they themselves could barely remember
but carried with them as their own year after year
hidden away hardly looked at until the secret
without their noticing had faded all the details white
for my mother it came to be the lace veil covering
the front of the baby carriage where she was being
wheeled through the Garden of the Gods when her parents were
still alive as she told about it later
and for my father it was the glare bleaching the surface
of the river as he sat under the white blaze
of summer in the rowboat tied above the waterline
where he was allowed to hold the oars and imagine
leaving did he see any farther when he was
dying in summer after midnight and before the solstice
coughing saying he was not afraid and was the veil still there
when my mother turned from her own garden one evening that same year
telling a friend on the telephone that she was going
to get a little rest now at her glasses were lying
apart from her on the floor not more than an hour
later when a neighbor pushed the door open and found her

 
Each movement embodies one or more chorale melodies or other songs. In the fourth movement, There is a reading of my own Whale Story (O Sacred Head Now Wounded).

I. Shall We Gather at the River
     I Thank You God for All Your Good Works †
II. Now All Lies Under Thee †
III. Fantasia on I Thank You God… †
IV. Fantasia on O Sacred Head Now Wounded †
     Shall We Gather at the River
     Watch the Night With Me (fl., tpt, harp, pno.)
     Soul, How Have You Become So Unhappy † (fl., tpt, sax., harp, pno.)
     Whale Story (O Sacred Head Now Wounded)

Why should God have incarnated only in human form? (A brief story about whales)

In the sixty million years or so the great whales have had, both on land and in the oceans, there have been numerous, and in fact, innumerable great beings among them. In fact, it turns out that all the great whales are either highly developed bodhisattvas or Buddhas. And in fact, it turns out that the Earth’s oceans are a Buddha Pure Land, and when you pass from this existence it is to be hoped for rebirth as a god or a great whale. In fact, it turns out that the Pure Land oceans of the Earth are a training ground for Buddhas across all space and time. We are loved by the great whales, and they, serenely riding the waves of birth and death, will die for us so that we may come to our enlightenment.

The end.

     O Sacred Head Now Wounded † (cl., sax., harp, pno., perc.)