Heaven-haven
for voice & piano. 5’
This song is quite dear to me, and I spent nearly two years composing it. The poem comes with a subtitle: “a nun takes the veil.” In this sense, the text draws on all the Carmelite mysticism of Teresa of Avila and Thérèse of Lisieux. But it also expresses a simple and universal human longing.
Text:
I have desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail
And a few lilies blow.
And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.
— Gerard Manley Hopkins
The line “And a few lilies blow” perhaps alludes to La noche oscura del alma by Juan de la Cruz — another Carmelite — who ends his famous poem with these words: “Dejando mi cuidado / Entre las azucenas olvidado” (leaving my cares among the lilies). The Arabic origin of the word “azucena” is also a ghostly reminder of the Sufi presence in Spain, which lingered until shortly before his birth.
Photo credits: Original