LORELEI Ensemble
Texts & Translations
He Remembers | JONAH ASKEW
Text by Ella Wilcox
The passion you forbade my lips to utter
Will not be silenced. You must hear it in
The sullen thunders when they roll and mutter:
And when the tempest nears, with wail and din,
I know your calm forgetfulness is broken,
And to your heart you whisper,
"He has spoken."
All nature understands and sympathises
With human passion. When the restless sea
Turns in its futile search for peace, and rises
To plead and to pursue, it pleads for me.
And with each desperate billow's anguished fretting.
Your heart must tell you,
"He is not forgetting."
When unseen hands in lightning strokes are writing
Mysterious words upon a cloudy scroll,
Know that my pent-up passion is inditing
A cypher message for your woman's soul;
And when the lawless winds rush by you shrieking,
Let your heart say,
"Now his despair is speaking."
Love comes, nor goes, at beck or call of reason,
Nor is love silent, though it says no word;
By day or night, in any clime or season,
A dominating passion must be heard.
So shall you hear, through Junes and through Decembers,
The voice of Nature saying,
"He remembers."
The Other | Arianelle arroyo
Text by Arianelle Arroyo
They met in bloom a chance to start
A brand-new bond, an open heart.
As the flowers grew the rain fell hard
One sought shelter the other moved far
The days stretched while the sun burned bright
Warm mornings followed by a chilled night
Humid air rose a bolt of light
One runs to look, the other inside
The trees turned gold, the air grew crisp
Spices filled the air long days are missed
Coats were donned, and the nights grew near;
One falls sick the other hunts deer
Soft snow falls turning streets white
A light glow in the night
But the cold was harsh a frozen bite
One by the fire, the other in ice
With their paths so diverged
Nothing felt the same their alliance has submerged
What once was bright, now cloaked in shade Their
camaraderie broken, their bond decayed.
Burning | fabian leung
Text by Fabian Leung
A sparrow saw a
burning nest, a
blistered beak, a
blackened crest.
She shouted:
“How terrible!
How horrible!
Why has this happened?”
An eagle came (a hero),
said: “They’ll be fine!”
“I’ll save the rest,
From my land mines.”
The sparrow heard and
then she wept.
Cor mio, deh, non languire | caleb j. abner
Text by Giovanni Battista Guarini
Cor mio, deh, non languire, Che
fai teco languir l'anima mia. Odi
i caldi sospiri: a te gl'invia La
pietate, e'l desire.
Mira in questi d'amor languidi lumi
Come il duol mi consumi
S'io ti potessi dar morendo aita,
Morrei per darti vita. Ma vivi, oimè,
ch'ingiustamente more Chi vivo tien
nel'altrui petto il core.
Languish not, ah, my heart,
For with you, my soul languishes too.
Hear the hot sighs: to you, they sent
Compassion and desire.
Borne by piety
If I could die to help you,
I would die to give you life.
But one lives, alas, who unjustly dies -
One who lives keeps the other’s heart
in his chest.
Attend Unto My Cry | Heng lin
Text from Psalm 17, King James Version of the Holy Bible
Hear the right, O Lord, attend unto my cry
Give ear unto my prayer, that goeth not out of feigned lips.
Let my sentence come forth from the presence;
let thine eyes behold the things that are equal.
Thou hast proved mine heart; thou hast visited me in the night;
Thou hast tried me, and shalt find nothing;
I am purposed that my mouth shall not transgress.
Concerning the world of men, by the word of thy lips I have kept me
from the paths of the destroyer.
Hold up my goings in thy paths, that my footsteps slip not.
I have called upon thee, for thou wilt hear me,
O God: incline thine ear unto me, and hear my speech.
Shew thy marvellous loving kindness,
O thou that safest by thy right hand them which put their trust in thee from
those that rise up against them.
Keep me as the apple of the eye, hide me under the shadow of thy wings,
From the wicked that oppresses me, from my deadly enemies, who
compass me about.
They are enclosed in their own fat: with their mouth they speak proudly.
They have now compassed us in our steps: they have set their eyes bowing down to the earth;
Like as a lion that is greedy of his prey, and as it were a young lion lurking in secret places.
Arise, O Lord, disappoint him, cast him down:
deliver my soul from the wicket, which is thy sword:
From men which are thy hand, O Lord, from men of the world, which have their
portion in this life, and whose belly thou fillest with thy hid treasure: they are full of children,
and leave the rest of their substance to their babes.
As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake,
with thy likeness.
Death and the Stars | payam yousefi
Text from “A Clear Midnight” by Walt Whitman
This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best,
Night, sleep, death and the stars.
Always the Garden | francesca hellerman
Text by James Leedy
This one is broken in pieces: Symphony #11 | tim brady
Text by Ian Ferrier, taken from his book “Coming & Going”
Staccato (#1)
look * see * run * fall * hold * lose *
wait * call * call out * call out in the
night * lost trace in the * can’t find
where I *
In Pieces (#2)
This one is broken in pieces. Holds out her hand she
tells you to be whole
Facing Creature (#3)
This creature looks only outward, parsing the continuous world into
rosaries of thought:
I see I touch I hold, tell, I say
I feel I breathe I taste I touch I fall
Undressed (#4a)
This one’s only clothes are recollection. At night when she undresses
there’s the day thrown on the bed. Then sleeps unweighed by
memory till she dresses once again.
Tracery (#4b)
This one is born of the feel of each limb as
she lies beside you.
This is the Beach (#5)
This is the beach where you
took off for an afternoon sail
and the wind kicked up and
the rudder snapped.
Now you’re 400 miles off course out in the tanker lanes scrambling for your life.
You made the best of choices. You did all the right things. You got high marks in school; stayed away from the kids
who did ecstacy every night. Where does it take you now? You’ve got only your wits
to carry you from now on.
So much violence in the world.... The sound of so much anger
Human (#6)
This creature sleeps one-third of her life. In vivid dreams she travels
to the same far country where she lives.
The Darwin Bible (#7)
It is the Darwin bible and its gospel is quite simple: Use these words until their meaning
makes no sense. In sentences lest memory be lost always repeat.