21 Mar Nearly Terminal
3 songs for voice & piano [4’]; words Eleni Zisimatos; 2024.
Commissioner: George Elliott Clarke with the assistance of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library
Premiere: Alex Samaras, baritone, with pianist Helen Becqué, the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, Toronto, May 23, 2024
Strange the sun behind
Strange glass
It amounts to mirrors, tricks
The business
Of You.
Quiet in the field
Everything quiet
Beneath
Memories of something
Deep under the white
Like a frozen fur
Detached from a body
The memory of a body
Forward, onward
Straight ahead
Like a horse
Like a sad story
Like a heart transplant Like a bomb
Forward to the very last
The casket of judgement
And there
Is
— Eleni Zisimatos, from Nearly Terminal (2019)