A Letter to Marianne Moore (from Longing for Home) – Carol Barnett

Composer: Carol Barnett

Text by: Eugene McCarthy,

Instrumentation baritone, piano

Duration: approx. 3'15"

Date Written:  2018

Composer’s note: Longing for Home is a song cycle written to celebrate Source Song Festival’s fifth season. The texts all reference homecoming in various ways – the enduring wish to return to a place remembered with love and longing, as well as the uncertainty, the impossibility of doing so.

“A Letter to Marianne Moore - Eugene McCarthy’s fanciful invitation to Marianne Moore, who died in 1972, references several familiar landmarks of the city of which she was a long-time resident. The boats, the piers, the ferry, the bridges, the gargoyles and the lions at the New York Public Library all afford opportunities for sonic pictures – horns, still waters or ripples, and those library lions processing down the street. Eugene McCarthy (1916-2005) was an American politician, poet, and long-time Congressman from Minnesota. 

The full cycle can be found here: https://opusimprints.com/products/longing-for-home-carol-barnett

text

LETTER TO MARIANNE MOORE

(in tribute to Joseph Grucci)

Come quickly to your city.
All the boats at the piers
are quiet, waiting for you. 
Only their flags and pennants move
and those gently as tongues whispering
you down from the sky.
The horns and whistles all are silent,
so that you can hear our softer call.

The Staten Island Ferry leaves no wake.
All the waters are still
mirrors waiting for your face.
If another looks, they erase
with quick ripples and regret.

The bridges are bowed,
waiting, and the tunnels call.
The gargoyles hold their stern faces,
but like children waiting to open
presents, threaten to smile.

The lions at the library, one can see
in peripheral vision, twitch their tails,
eager to follow you down the street.
We have promised them your coming 
to quiet them.

Everyone knows that there are brown butter-
flies in your hair, and agates
and small mirrors in your purse
and words.

Come quickly to your city.

Eugene McCarthy (1916-2005)