Скачать или смотреть Carol Barnett Introduces “Near Odessa”

“Near Odessa” for SSAA, piano

The piano carries us along while the voices paint the scenes, from birdsong to gentle wind, boarded-up storefronts to wheat ready for harvest, encapsulating both the simplicity and the enduring beauty of the everyday images in Patricia Kirkpatrick’s poem about journeying through rural western Minnesota.

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Text:

Near the end of summer.
Wheatfield with lark. With swift,
longspur, and sparrow. I see the birds
opening tails and wings
above grasses
and hidden nests.
Soybeans with bells, yellowing, green
tassels of corn, geese
again and again.
I see the birds
but wind takes all the sound.
Small towns are reduced to chains or storefronts,
boarded-up.
Almost to the river called a lake, grey stones of water,
dammed, white-capped, hinge
between states.
Some fields are so gold they seem to be singing.
The gold fields lie down, flat but not empty,
and will be harvested later with blades.
Near Odessa
I come to a place where the end is beginning.
Where the light is absolute, it rises.

– Patricia Kirkpatrick (Odessa)