| Male Chorus Leader: |
And so the child was hers through birth and after, and I was household helper, hired hand to fetch and tote and clean up after them. And I was happy, happy in the role, and marveled at the bond, the natural bond between a woman’s and an infant’s needs. To my consciousness, they became an it, a single thing outside of us yet still within such intimate proximity we danced in fixed and elegant orbit of the same cosmic consequences, the same vague, magnificent, fate filled potency. |
| Female Chorus: |
May love become a grave contingency. |
| Male Chorus: |
Praise miles of dirt packed thick with bulbs and seeds. |
| Female Chorus: |
May myths of love not blur the thing itself. |
| Male Chorus: |
Praise the harvest! Praise abundance! Praise life! |
| Female Chorus Leader: |
It was in language he made his bond with her. In myths and legends, explanations of the pictures in the books he read aloud each night, his voice became the voice of time, and why, and why and why and why and why. When she was barely old enough to talk, when she could barely talk they talked for hours. His interest never flagged; he sat and calmly listened, then calmly answered every question, or simply nodded affirmation as she babbled on from point to childish point. He repossessed his world, through words, through her. And as she grew into the language, past babble into a reasoned, smart regard of fibula and what she daily witnessed, so his world deepened such that what had been vexations, horrors, threats, affronts and schemes became in sum the mystery of live, that which he would prepare her for before he passed from mystery to mystery. |
| Female and Male Chorus: |
Praise heart’s surrender to the small and mild. |
| Female Chorus Leader: |
His silence is haunted by her voice. He listens to each word she doesn’t say. My heart may not surrender to her loss as long as I must mourn his mourning her. I walk out to the garden, touch each rose, pick away a few dead leaves, caress a thorn. Magnolias nod their gaudy blooms like old bewitching mothers soon to curl, and die. They are so much clumsier than the roses. Yet I love them more than any flower. I love the rich creaminess of their petals. I love how comical they are in death, their rotting skins hugging to the compost like happy drunkards singing to themselves. My baby’s gone, and legions of roses spill their sexual softness after her upon the huge and perfect lap that death becomes. |
Richard Katrovas
from his book Dithyrambs: Choral Lyrics
Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1998
used with permission of the poet
example of dialogue