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BROKEN GROUND
FOR CHOIR AND ORCHESTRA
by Jonathan Chenette
Original poetry commissioned for this project by the Iowa Sesquicentennial Commission and Grinnell College
in honor of the sesquicentennials in 1996 of the state of Iowa and Grinnell College.
MOVEMENT 1. RAY YOUNG BEAR, "THE
ICE-GLAZED LANDSCAPE OF OUR GRANDFATHERS" (1993-95)
From whence the day-light begins,
toward the cardinal point of morning-
talking mother, the ghostly lake
undulates in the bluish-gray haze
of the valley. And although the sun
reflects there are no waves breaking on
rocky shore. |
We lived here once inside and along
these ancient hills. There were springs,
cool and quiet, that served as doorways
to women-deities who used attraction
to alter inevitability.
But all that remains are the shiny hills,
the ones that are covered with snow
and ice, creating a watery illusion.
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play mvt 1 (mp3: 3:57, 3.6 MB)
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MOVEMENT 2. MICHAEL CAREY, "ONCE
WHEN THE GROUND WAS HOLY" (1994)
I
Once when the
ground was holy,
you could enter it
and come out again;
the dust that
covered your dust
did no harm;
the light that
entered your bones
when all went dark
sent you out again
into the world
with dew, with dew
on the tips of your wings.
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III
Once when the
ground was holy,
horses, more horses
than you could believe,
would walk
through leaves
and make
no sound.
In autumn
you would
find them
in the pasture
or on the wild hillside
where they played
and grazed
drinking deeply
from some
strange water.
Sometimes, when
the weather
was right, they would
let you ride them
if you wished,
if you wished,
if you wished
long enough
and hard enough,
if you
remembered how. |
VIII
Once when the
ground was holy,
people left --
butcher, baker, beggar man, thief,
saint, sinner, scholar --
wherever they were,
whatever they were doing,
whoever they were doing it with
when ice melted,
when brown turned green,
when wind came and came
and blew the souls
right out of them,
when each blade of grass
danced naked
at its own resurrection. |
play mvt 2 (mp3: 3:33, 3.3 MB)
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MOVEMENT
3, BEGINNING AND END. PAULA V. SMITH, "RHIZOMES" (1994)
Anchor and balance for the waving sea
of grasses bending in the prairie wind,
a silent force is working underground:
engines driving the prairie from beneath,
inches below and only inches deep.
Invisibly below, the grass advances,
stems growing outward, under the land,
rising, spreading, racing, following--
sending forth new culms and rootlets
from the ends of tips and nodes.
All that is prairie sleeps in this old hammock,
the rugged fabric of a dense earth layer
threaded all through with interwoven rhizomes,
not rooted deep, but in continual motion;
a cradling web for all that breathes above.
MOVEMENT 3, MIDDLE. EDWARD HIRSCH,"IOWA FLORA"(1994)
(IN MEMORY OF AMY CLAMPITT)
We thought we were having an indigenous childhood
splashed with Indian paintbrush and grassy knolls
thickened by birdfoot violets and ordinary goldenrod,
but we kept finding noxious alien weeds in the hills--
quackgrass and thistle, European morning glory
that no state legislation could control.
We inherited pioneer grasses high as a prairie
schooner, but there were also fresh settlements
of bog flowers and refugees from the sea-
coast marshes, silky-leaved Virginia plants
and Texas marigolds, imported seeds and ornamentals,
weeds from the wasted villages of other continents.
Nature consists of immigrants and mongrels,
and you taught us HOW to prize coincidence and impurity
in wayward fields, the deserted and marginal...
I went down to the swamp to mourn for you, Amy,
and it was as if Providence led me to the place
where I stumbled upon yellow swamp betony
and pink foxglove mingled with something nameless
(unfathomable the mystery before us,
you said)
and the shining, cup-flowered grass of Parnassus.
play mvt 3 (mp3: 8:02, 7.4 MB)
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MOVEMENT
4. EDWARD HIRSCH, "OCEAN OF GRASS" (1994)
The ground was holy, but
the wind was harsh
and unbroken prairie stretched for hundreds of miles
so that all she could see was an ocean of grass.
Some days she got so lonely she went outside
and nestled among the sheep, for company.
The ground was holy, but the wind was harsh
and prairie fires swept across the plains,
lighting up the country like a vast tinderbox
until all she could see was an ocean of flames.
She went for three years without viewing a tree.
When her husband finally took her on a timber run
she called the ground holy and the wind harsh
and got down on her knees and wept inconsolably,
who lived in a sod hut for thirty more years
until the world dissolved in an ocean of grass.
Think of her sometimes when you pace the earth,
our mother, where she was laid to rest.
The ground was holy but the wind was harsh
for those who drowned in an ocean of grass.
play mvt 4 (mp3: 7:18, 6.7 MB)
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MOVEMENT
5, BEGINNING. DAN HUNTER, "ONLY THE WIND" (1995)
Only the wind bends the grass
on the graveyard's broken ground.
Only the wind cradles the marble stones.
Only the wind calls out the names
once whispered in love,
once shivered in fear,
once bellowed mightily in dreams.
Only the wind sings
of each river of life
dried to a name
etched on a stone.
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Now the stones lie
silent and smooth,
all names erased by the wind.
Only the wind cries.
Only the wind sings.
Only the wind bends the grass.
Only the wind cradles the stones.
Only the wind crosses the ground.
Only the wind never ends.
Only the wind, only the wind.
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MOVEMENT 5, END. MARY SWANDER, "WHEN THE GROUND WAS BROKEN " (1994)
I.
When the ground was broken--
the plow, the blade,
the long straight furrow--
all that burrowed into the earth was song.
The big, the little bluestem bent down.
The big, the little dipper scooped up
the birds that once blackened the sky,
scooped up the words that remained unspoken,
and the shooting stars fell
down and down again,
an underground constellation,
their light, the light of the unnamed,
the untamed, their light,
the light of dark tunnels,
the light of worms, broken,
no longer our maids, no longer
our final companions in the end
when the blade digs deeper,
the mice running out of the house,
and the dirt packs down over our faces.
II.
When the ground was broken,
the ponds, the swamps drained,
the horses lifted into the air,
their wings spread over the pastures,
the fences and posts.
Buckets dipped into wells,
the faces in the water echoing back their sounds
over and over the land
until the ground was broken
and the dust covered our shoes,
sweeping through the cracks in our skin.
We held it all in our pockets, our hands--
the dirt, the dung, the words--
and what we carried with us
the horses had known all along,
their song, the stampede of the herd--
fetlock and hoof--
their song, the roll of thunder over
the ridge, the plain, and then
the rain, the blessed rain. |
III.
And the rain came tinkling down--
butcher, baker, beggarwoman, thief--
on the earth like dropping coins--
saint, sinner, scholar,
and the river came flooding over
the plains until every seed sprouted
until every stalk thickened into a fist
until every fist poked through the clouds
until every cloud darkened and the rain
came rushing down, the ground broken
away in chunks, floating downstream.
For grasses and roots gone,
there was nothing left to hold it in place.
There was nothing left to put a face on the land
and its dream returned to the mud,to the turtle,
the hard outer shell.
It burrowed back into the earth,
and the river came flooding over
the meadow, the plains, the waters
rushing and filling every crack and tunnel.
IV.
What happened to the fire?
What happened to the rope?
What happened to the flames
rolling over the plains,
the bucket lowering into the well?
What words were left in the water?
What words were left in the roots,
the stems, the stalks that remained?
Our hope is in the ashes.
Our hope is in the smoke.
Our hope is in our own hands.
Our hope is in the mice
running out of the house.
Our hope is in the turtle
pushing its head out of its shell.
Our hope is in the worms
and their hope in the dirt.
Our hope is in the blades of grass
turning brown, turning green,
turning green, green,green. |
play mvt 5 (mp3: 12:54, 11.8 MB)
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created by Jonathan Chenette,11/5/03
last modified, 01/04/09
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