Programme Note
Stolen Voices was commissioned by the Jewish Music Institute in association with the United Nations Children in Armed Conflict Division for the United Nations International Day of Peace 2007.
Tarik O’Regan
New York, June 2007
Text
STOLEN VOICES
Melanie Challenger (2007)
The heart measures
The striking quality of our time,
Absorbing the matter of the world,
Its elements and characters,
Afraid of disturbing the lifeless
Doomed to grave ordeals.
Rains alter everything, the low
Mounds barely recognisable
But for the names of the dead.
I heard a thousand blended notes
The human soul that through me ran.
This day is an eternity;
I wander dreamily through its strains.
The black sky,
Very beautiful and ordinary,
Soars in total darkness, reels to and fro.
The skies are red in the east,
Where the sun will show itself;
Darkness
Has played out its part.
I pass my finger over the dead silence,
A clear line in the dust. I am carried away from this existence
To another world. My whole being drinks
In the sweet morning fragrance.
Here, in a world of dew,
I kneel in body and spirit.
I see before me
Sun and sun and sun.