The Far West

I. October

chorus and string orchestra

text by Tim Dlugos

An afternoon of steady light
That clears the air, and clearly shows 
Each imperfection in the skin,
Each gap within the ragged rows

Of stalks and dusty gleanings left
When crops were harvested and sent
To cities where the people shop
For seasoning, for nourishment.

As though lit from within, the strips
Of earth across the gentle hill
Glow with the fiery colors of
The dying leaves, or, fiercer still,

Are shadowed by the sleeping vines
That stiffly curl and seem to die,
And on a cart, someone to watch
The empty fields, the empty sky. 

IIa. Et in Arcadia Ego

tenor and string orchestra

text by Tim Dlugos

Lo I the man, once masked in widower’s weeds
with bloat, blood and adrenalin engorged
now stumble down a grassy ambleway
where ticks adhere to motions that I forged

in smithies of desire, furnace of lust,
and cool plunge of companionship
                  Flowers that I learned

the names of, nectar and deliriant,
too late to stem the growth and prune the bine,
lace memories with tendrils that have choked
vanishing nature, vanished friends of mine. 

IIb. Parachute

tenor, sopranos, basses, and string orchestra

text by Tim Dlugos

solo:

The Bergman image of a game of chess with Death,
that is what I think of when I remember
I have AIDS. But when
I think of how AIDS kills my friends,
I think of an insatiable and prowling beast with razor teeth and a persistent
stink that sticks to every living branch or flower its rank fur brushes
as it stalks its prey.

men:

horizontal eyes
scan for a human form
behind the brush.

tenor solo:

I think of that disgusting
animal eating my beautiful friends, innocent as baby deer. Dwight:
so delicate and vain,
Dwight the dancer, Dwight the fashion illustrator and the fashion plate,
Dwight the frightened, Dwight erased,
evicted from his own young body.

women: 

thick to burn
away like fever,
boil away like rain

solo: 

Dwight dead. At Bellevue, I wrapped
my arms around his second skin
of gauze and scars and tubing, brushed my hand against
his plats, and said goodbye.
I hope I’m not the one
who loosed the devouring animal that massacred you, gentle boy.
I know AIDS is no chess game but a hunt, and there is no
way of escaping the bloody horror of the kill, no way
to bail out, no bright
parachute beside my bed. 

III. Retrovir

chorus and string orchestra

text by Tim Dlugos

Turn
back oh man
and see how where you've come from looks from here: the light-
filled leak of sunrise, drone
of morning’s clarity and fleeting sense
of firm direction, lunch with wine,
siesta and the afternoon you’re part of.
Here the sky is always blue
And white, the colors of the pills
that poison you while they extend your life,
inoculating you with time
that draws you back with fingers
curved around the bowstring.
You’re not the target, you’re the arrow
and the dirty wind that hits
your face on summer streets these too-long evenings
means you’re moving faster than you know, a shrill
projectile through the neutral air
above a world war, headed for the flesh
of someone’s notion of croquet
at twilight on the lawn. The thickening damp
crowds out the light, as green
of grass and fountain separates
to blue and white. 

IV. The Far West

tenor and string orchestra

text by Tim Dlugos

The city and the continent
trail off into cold black
water the same way: at
the western edge, a flat
stretch with precipitous
planes set perpendicular
and back from the beach
or beach-equivalent, a blacktop
margin where the drugged
and dying trudge, queue up
for Hades.
Dreams of Bolinas haunted me for years
before I saw it. I’d huddle
at the foot of the cliff in a cold
wind late at night, wrapped
in Indian blankets, waiting
with strangers as the tidal wave
or temblor hit. Tonight I walk
with old friends in a new dream
past a vest-pocket park of great
formality and charm in the far
West Village.
I walk out to the quay where gondola
after enormous gondola departs
for “the other side,” not New Jersey
anymore, anymore than something
prosaic as another mass of land
past the bright horizon
could function as a mirror
of the chopped-away Bolinas hill.
O western edge, where points
of interest on maps of individual
hearts and bodies disappear
in waters of a depth unfathomable
even in a dream, I had thought
that sleep was meant to blunt
your sharpness, not to hone
and polish with the lapping
of the hungry waves of Lethe. 

V. Breathing in Connecticut

chorus and string orchestra

text by Tim Dlugos

slow the noose
fast the holy day
dark the rasp
light the cigarette

and dare to see our father
wheezing through this state
dare to say our father
with the lighted match

we smoke his brand
and flaunt the same bravado
at the same bad news
in femoral pulse or flash 

VI. G-9

tenor and string orchestra

text by Tim Dlugos

There are forty-nine names
on my list of the dead,
thirty-two names of the sick.
There may come a time when
I’m unable to respond with words,
or works, or gratitude to AIDS;
a time when my attitude
caves in, when I’m as weak
as the men who lie across
the dayroom couches hour
after hour, watching sitcoms,
drawing blanks. Maybe
my head will be shaved
and scarred from surgery;
maybe I’ll be pencil-
thin and paler than
a ghost, pale as the vesper
light outside my window now.
When it’s time
to move on to the next step,
that will be a great adventure.
Helena Hughes, Tibetan
Buddhist, tells me that
there are three stages in death.
The first is white, like passing
Through a thick but porous wall.
The second stage is red;
The third is black, and then
you’re finished, ready
for the next event. I’m glad
she has a road map, but I don’t
feel the need for one myself.
I’ve trust enough in all
that’s happened in my life,
the unexpected love
and gentleness that rushes in
to fill the arid spaces
in my heart, the way the city
glow fills up the sky
above the river, making it
seem less than night.
I hope that death will lift me
by the hair like an angel
in a Hebrew myth, snatch me with
the strength of sleep’s embrace,
and gently set me down
where I’m supposed to be,
in just the right place. 

VIIa. Note to Michael

tenor, chorus, and string orchestra

text by Tim Dlugos

strange to see the river through the window
that lets the colors in behind me      it’s real light 
as opposed to artificial         it's real life
I’m in the middle of, I hope       where you are
is just as real (I also hope)      and
what we feel between us is a filament that bears
its own energy, glowing in ways too subtle
or too fast for the eye to pick up, a precious alloy
that puts us in the same place “on one level”:
the level of the river and the light 

VIIb. Heaven

tenor, chorus, and string orchestra

text by George Herbert

chorus and tenor solo in dialogue:

O who will show me those delights on high? I.
Thou Echo, thou art mortall, all men know. No.
Wert thou not born among the trees and leaves? Leaves.
And are there any leaves, that still abide? Bide.
What leaves are they? impart the matter wholly. Holy.
Are holy leaves the Echo then of blisse? Yes.
Then tell me, what is that supreme delight? Light.
Light to the minde : what shall the will enjoy? Joy.
But are there cares and businesse with the pleasure? Leisure.
Light, joy, and leisure ; but shall they persever? Ever.