Description
To Live in This World is a mix of lullaby, hope, and longing. Beginning with “raindrops,” the lower voices transport us gently to the intimate scene of a father with his son on his shoulder as they cross a street in rain. The gentle melodic lines and close harmony of the music highlight the tender bond between father and son, before slowly building toward Naomi’s profound message for all of us.
We’re not going to be able
to live in this world
if we’re not willing to do what he’s doing
with one another.
Expansive harmonies then lead to a sense of emptiness as Naomi’s words tell us,
The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.
The piece ends as it began, with “raindrops,” stopping halfway through the repeated phrase, “FRAGILE, HANDLE WITH CARE.” The question is, “Are we willing to do this – with everyone?”
Catherine
Lyrics
Shoulders
A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.
No car must splash him.
No car drive too near to his shadow.
This man carries the world’s most sensitive cargo
but he’s not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.
His ear fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy’s dream
deep inside him.
We’re not going to be able
to live in this world
if we’re not willing to do what he’s doing
with one another.
The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.
Naomi Shihab Nye
“Shoulders” from Red Suitcase.
Copyright © 1994 by Naomi Shihab Nye.
Used with Permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of the author and BOA Editions, Ltd., www.boaeditions.org
Composer Notes
Composer’s Notes
To Live in This World is the third song in a song cycle by the same name based on texts written by female mystics from a variety of time periods, countries, and spiritual and religious traditions. For this third song, I wanted to set a text by a living mystic. Someone who saw the world with an expansive view of who we are and who we could be, if we listened. Palestinian-American poet, Naomi Shihab Nye’s poetry inhabits these qualities.
When I read Naomi’s poem, “Shoulders,” I cried. I could see the father standing in the rain at the edge of the road with his son asleep on his shoulder. I could feel the tenderness and love of Naomi’s words, the yearning for a better world. And I believed, like the poet, that we are capable of finding it.
We’re not there yet and Naomi is deeply, and unapologetically, aware that this is the case. And so the poem, and thus the setting, are a mix of lullaby, hope and longing. Naomi has provided the map. Will we choose to follow it?
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