FENTON SONGS

are settings of four poems from James Fenton’s recent collection OUT OF DANGER.  I undertook these in 1997 as a preparation for setting Fenton’s libretto based on Salman Rushdie’s HAROUN AND THE SEA OF STORIES, an opera project on which we are collaborating; the first performances took place in New York at the Guggenheim Museum on 17 and 18 May, 1998.  I see the sequence of poems as proceeding from public to private, from agitation to repose, with local ups and downs along the way.  The soprano is accompanied by violin, cello, and piano; the piece lasts about eight minutes.

-Charles Wuorinen, May 1998

FENTON SONGS 

Copyright ©1974 Salamander Press Limited.

From the collection Out of Danger by James Fenton.

All rights reserved.

 Beauty, Danger and Dismay 

Beauty, danger and dismay

Met me on the public way.

Whichever I chose, I chose dismay.

Out of Danger

Heart be kind and sign the release

As the trees their loss approve.

Learn as leaves must learn to fall

Out of danger, out of love.

What belongs to frost and thaw

Sullen winter will not harm.

What belongs to wind and rain

Is out of danger from the storm.

Jealous passion, cruel need

Betray the heart they feed upon.

But what belongs to earth and death

Is out of danger from the sun.

I was cruel, I was wrong –

Hard to say and hard to know.

You do not belong to me.

You are out of danger now –

Out of danger from the wind,

Out of danger from the wave,

Out of danger from the heart

Falling, falling out of love.

Serious

Awake, alert,

Suddenly serious in love,

You’re a surprise.

I’ve known you long enough –

Now I can hardly meet your eyes.

It’s not that I’m

Embarrassed or ashamed.

You’ve changed the rules

The way I’d hoped they’d change

Before I thought: hopes are for fools.

Let me walk with you.

I’ve got the newspapers to fetch.

I think you know

I think you have the edge

But I feel cheerful even so.

That’s why I laughed.

That’s why I went and kicked that stone.

I’m serious!

That’s why I cartwheeled home.

This should mean something. Yes, it does.

Hinterhof

Stay near to me and I’ll stay near to you –

As near as you are dear to me will do,

        Near as the rainbow to the rain,

        The west wind to the windowpane,

As fire to the hearth, as dawn to dew.

Stay true to me and I’ll stay true to you —

As true as you are new to me will do,

  New as the rainbow in the spray,

        Utterly new in every way,

New in the way that what you say is true.

Stay near to me, stay true to me. I’ll stay

As near, as true to you as heart could pray.

        Heart never hoped that one might be

        Half of the things you are to me –

The dawn, the fire, the rainbow and the day.