-environmentally-friendly program notes-
Your browser may attempt to translate the non-English texts, which will mess with some formatting.
If you request your browser to stop "helping", this should resemble a concert program!
If you request your browser to stop "helping", this should resemble a concert program!
During a concert, I put translations here in case folks need them...I will take them down afterward.
ANIMAL SONGS TEXTS
Le bestiaire - Poet: Guillaume Apollinaire
The Dromedary
With his four dromedaries
Don Pedro d’Alfaroubeira
Traversed the world and admired it.
Such is what I would like to do
If I had four dromedaries.
The Tibetan Goat
The fleece of this goat and even
of gold for which Jason paid dearly,
Have no value
Compared to the hair I desire.
The Grasshopper
Here is the little grasshopper, nourishment for Saint John
May my verses be like her - a feast for the best folks.
The Dolphin
Dolphins, you play in the sea
But the flotsam is always bitter
Perchance my joy may break free?
Though life remains cruel.
The Crawfish
Uncertainty, oh my delights,
You and I, we travel along
Like the crawfish travel.
Backwards, ever backwards.
The Carp
In your pools, in your ponds,
Carp, how long you live!
Is it that Death has forgotten you,
Fish of melancholy?
“The pros and cons of live food” -
Text: Anonymous, from ratemyfishtank.com
Cretoxyrhina – Poet: Stacey Barelos
Cretoxyrhina - swimming, pacing, makes his home
in the Western Interior Seaway
With vacations in Israel, Turkey, and Kazakhstan
Luckily there were no geopolitical conflicts limiting
your travel in the Cretaceous
We have named you the Ginsu Shark - teeth so sharp you could slice through a tin can
But what purpose would that serve?
With those teeth, I wonder if you gave
a quick death to your prey?
Or perhaps chivalry didn’t exist in the age of dinosaurs?
I have some bad news: your home dried out
and became Kansas.
But it’s peaceful there, with lots of tasty cows and wheat.
Despite my fascination, let’s be honest
Let’s be completely honest.
We would not have been friends.
I’m resigned to admiration from distant time and space.
I hope you had a good time while it lasted, Cretoxyrhina.
And so the penguin – Poet: Anthony Donofrio
Perhaps I’ll find home.
Perhaps I’ll find myself.
Perhaps I’ll find something meaningful.
Perhaps I’ll find death.
And so, the penguin, now strengthened,
fear pushed down, somewhere, began.
The others, some curious, some stunned,
looked on.
As did a team of researchers.
Cameras out, they chose to
archive rather than save or at least help.
And so, the penguin walked.
And so, the penguin endured.
And so, the penguin took in the
vast empty of a new home.
A new reality, A new sense of…
And so, the penguin wept.
Later, as they closed in…
Smoke.
Smoldering.
Warmth.
And a letter.
“My dearest, I write to you in complete despair. This place has broken me. Yesterday, I learned that I must spend yet another winter here. I am unsure of what to do, as I cannot leave.
Part of me wants to fight, and part of me wants to collapse. Another part of me wants to burn the entire thing to the ground.
Just take the whole place down.”
And so, the penguin found a
small hut, still standing, with a
small warm fire.
And so, the penguin slept.
The Sea Cow - Poet: M.C. St John
How now sea cow, swimming in celestial waters,
grazing on motes of light and seaweed, Murmuring
across the depths. You play the hide and seek
of ghost-gray submarines, your flippers propel
you into the deepest secret spots, though
I suspect you want to be found.
The lonely susurrations from your snout
are drops in the sonar rippling out and out and
Out to stir the kelp, inspire the coral, and lap
against unknown shores.
Sea cow, how now you are another creature
wondering where it’s drifting and singing and why,
for the waters are vast and strange for a string
of notes no one will hear or remember.
Yet you sing.
Sometimes keen, yes, other times moan,
your brow wrinkled and whiskers twitched
for your voice to carry into the shadows
where years are the fine silt sediment from life
only to build more blind and silent reefs.
Now how, sea cow, are you compelled to send
such battered lullabies into the big drink
to be swallowed by the uncaring waves?
Pausing your call, you hear the response--
It is tinny and faint, a frequency from a far-off throat.
The song is one you know well.
And the ocean shrinks that much more
with the comfort of a chart to follow.
A Unit of Measure – Poet: Sandra Beasley
All can be measured by the standard of the capybara.
Everyone is lesser than or greater than the capybara.
Everything is taller or shorter than the capybara.
Everything is mistaken for a Brazilian dance craze
more or less frequently than the capybara.
Everyone eats greater or fewer watermelons
than the capybara. Everyone eats more or less bark.
Everyone barks more than or less than the capybara,
who also whistles, clicks, grunts, and emits what is known
as his alarm squeal. Everyone is more or less alarmed
than a capybara, who—because his back legs
are longer than his front legs—feels like
he is going downhill at all times.
Everyone is more or less a master of grasses
than the capybara. Or going by the scientific name,
more or less Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris--
or, going by the Greek translation, more or less
water hog. Everyone is more or less
of a fish than the capybara, defined as the outermost realm
of fishdom by the 16th-century Catholic Church.
Everyone is eaten more or less often for Lent than
the capybara. Shredded, spiced, and served over plantains,
everything tastes more or less like pork
than the capybara. Before you decide that you are
greater than or lesser than a capybara, consider
that while the Brazilian capybara breeds only once a year,
the Venezuelan variety mates continuously.
Consider the last time you mated continuously.
Consider the year of your childhood when you had
exactly as many teeth as the capybara--
twenty—and all yours fell out, and all his
kept growing. Consider how his skin stretches
in only one direction. Accept that you are stretchier
than the capybara. Accept that you have foolishly
distributed your eyes, ears, and nostrils
all over your face. Accept that now you will never be able
to sleep underwater. Accept that the fish
will never gather to your capybara body offering
their soft, finned love. One of us,
they say, one of us,
but they will not say it to you.
Ode to a Wombat – Poet: Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Oh, how the family affections combat
Within the heart, and each hour flings a bomb at
My burning soul; neither from owl or bat
Can peace be gained till I have clasped my wombat.
Il Uommibatto – Poet: Christina Rossetti
When Wombats do inspire, I strike my disused lyre!
O Wombat, Agile, playful,
What have you done
Smooth and round!
You must not flee
What a vagabond - don't disappear
Burrowing into the world
The real weight of a hemisphere
Is not light
Death of a Wombat - Poet: Dante Gabriel Rossetti
I never reared a young Wombat
To glad me with his pin-hole eye,
But when he most was sweet and fat
And tail-less, he was sure to die!
The Diver – Poet: Megan Levad
Like dust, like dusk, no, gossamer--
but only if you don’t know how to look.
See my nacre-shine, get closer,
close enough to touch. A book
will tell you: life-long love, a follower
of roads, the sun. I know the mirror.
We all make milk. Get closer.
Oh, how long a dove, mistook.
Swim with me, plunge headlong under
unseen currents, lift. Breathe the real air.
The Dromedary
With his four dromedaries
Don Pedro d’Alfaroubeira
Traversed the world and admired it.
Such is what I would like to do
If I had four dromedaries.
The Tibetan Goat
The fleece of this goat and even
of gold for which Jason paid dearly,
Have no value
Compared to the hair I desire.
The Grasshopper
Here is the little grasshopper, nourishment for Saint John
May my verses be like her - a feast for the best folks.
The Dolphin
Dolphins, you play in the sea
But the flotsam is always bitter
Perchance my joy may break free?
Though life remains cruel.
The Crawfish
Uncertainty, oh my delights,
You and I, we travel along
Like the crawfish travel.
Backwards, ever backwards.
The Carp
In your pools, in your ponds,
Carp, how long you live!
Is it that Death has forgotten you,
Fish of melancholy?
“The pros and cons of live food” -
Text: Anonymous, from ratemyfishtank.com
Cretoxyrhina – Poet: Stacey Barelos
Cretoxyrhina - swimming, pacing, makes his home
in the Western Interior Seaway
With vacations in Israel, Turkey, and Kazakhstan
Luckily there were no geopolitical conflicts limiting
your travel in the Cretaceous
We have named you the Ginsu Shark - teeth so sharp you could slice through a tin can
But what purpose would that serve?
With those teeth, I wonder if you gave
a quick death to your prey?
Or perhaps chivalry didn’t exist in the age of dinosaurs?
I have some bad news: your home dried out
and became Kansas.
But it’s peaceful there, with lots of tasty cows and wheat.
Despite my fascination, let’s be honest
Let’s be completely honest.
We would not have been friends.
I’m resigned to admiration from distant time and space.
I hope you had a good time while it lasted, Cretoxyrhina.
And so the penguin – Poet: Anthony Donofrio
Perhaps I’ll find home.
Perhaps I’ll find myself.
Perhaps I’ll find something meaningful.
Perhaps I’ll find death.
And so, the penguin, now strengthened,
fear pushed down, somewhere, began.
The others, some curious, some stunned,
looked on.
As did a team of researchers.
Cameras out, they chose to
archive rather than save or at least help.
And so, the penguin walked.
And so, the penguin endured.
And so, the penguin took in the
vast empty of a new home.
A new reality, A new sense of…
And so, the penguin wept.
Later, as they closed in…
Smoke.
Smoldering.
Warmth.
And a letter.
“My dearest, I write to you in complete despair. This place has broken me. Yesterday, I learned that I must spend yet another winter here. I am unsure of what to do, as I cannot leave.
Part of me wants to fight, and part of me wants to collapse. Another part of me wants to burn the entire thing to the ground.
Just take the whole place down.”
And so, the penguin found a
small hut, still standing, with a
small warm fire.
And so, the penguin slept.
The Sea Cow - Poet: M.C. St John
How now sea cow, swimming in celestial waters,
grazing on motes of light and seaweed, Murmuring
across the depths. You play the hide and seek
of ghost-gray submarines, your flippers propel
you into the deepest secret spots, though
I suspect you want to be found.
The lonely susurrations from your snout
are drops in the sonar rippling out and out and
Out to stir the kelp, inspire the coral, and lap
against unknown shores.
Sea cow, how now you are another creature
wondering where it’s drifting and singing and why,
for the waters are vast and strange for a string
of notes no one will hear or remember.
Yet you sing.
Sometimes keen, yes, other times moan,
your brow wrinkled and whiskers twitched
for your voice to carry into the shadows
where years are the fine silt sediment from life
only to build more blind and silent reefs.
Now how, sea cow, are you compelled to send
such battered lullabies into the big drink
to be swallowed by the uncaring waves?
Pausing your call, you hear the response--
It is tinny and faint, a frequency from a far-off throat.
The song is one you know well.
And the ocean shrinks that much more
with the comfort of a chart to follow.
A Unit of Measure – Poet: Sandra Beasley
All can be measured by the standard of the capybara.
Everyone is lesser than or greater than the capybara.
Everything is taller or shorter than the capybara.
Everything is mistaken for a Brazilian dance craze
more or less frequently than the capybara.
Everyone eats greater or fewer watermelons
than the capybara. Everyone eats more or less bark.
Everyone barks more than or less than the capybara,
who also whistles, clicks, grunts, and emits what is known
as his alarm squeal. Everyone is more or less alarmed
than a capybara, who—because his back legs
are longer than his front legs—feels like
he is going downhill at all times.
Everyone is more or less a master of grasses
than the capybara. Or going by the scientific name,
more or less Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris--
or, going by the Greek translation, more or less
water hog. Everyone is more or less
of a fish than the capybara, defined as the outermost realm
of fishdom by the 16th-century Catholic Church.
Everyone is eaten more or less often for Lent than
the capybara. Shredded, spiced, and served over plantains,
everything tastes more or less like pork
than the capybara. Before you decide that you are
greater than or lesser than a capybara, consider
that while the Brazilian capybara breeds only once a year,
the Venezuelan variety mates continuously.
Consider the last time you mated continuously.
Consider the year of your childhood when you had
exactly as many teeth as the capybara--
twenty—and all yours fell out, and all his
kept growing. Consider how his skin stretches
in only one direction. Accept that you are stretchier
than the capybara. Accept that you have foolishly
distributed your eyes, ears, and nostrils
all over your face. Accept that now you will never be able
to sleep underwater. Accept that the fish
will never gather to your capybara body offering
their soft, finned love. One of us,
they say, one of us,
but they will not say it to you.
Ode to a Wombat – Poet: Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Oh, how the family affections combat
Within the heart, and each hour flings a bomb at
My burning soul; neither from owl or bat
Can peace be gained till I have clasped my wombat.
Il Uommibatto – Poet: Christina Rossetti
When Wombats do inspire, I strike my disused lyre!
O Wombat, Agile, playful,
What have you done
Smooth and round!
You must not flee
What a vagabond - don't disappear
Burrowing into the world
The real weight of a hemisphere
Is not light
Death of a Wombat - Poet: Dante Gabriel Rossetti
I never reared a young Wombat
To glad me with his pin-hole eye,
But when he most was sweet and fat
And tail-less, he was sure to die!
The Diver – Poet: Megan Levad
Like dust, like dusk, no, gossamer--
but only if you don’t know how to look.
See my nacre-shine, get closer,
close enough to touch. A book
will tell you: life-long love, a follower
of roads, the sun. I know the mirror.
We all make milk. Get closer.
Oh, how long a dove, mistook.
Swim with me, plunge headlong under
unseen currents, lift. Breathe the real air.