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lyrics

(de l'oubli)
On a relevé le rideau
cinq fois,
six fois peut-être;
mai il a fini par rester baissé,
non levé, sur l’Acteur.

Je reste seule avec ma proie
palpitante et qui va m’échapper,
seule dans une foule
floue et qui va se ramifiant au loin,
penchée sur un problème
aux données insuffisantes.

Je m’efforcerai de revoir ses chevaux flottants
estompés dans le décor,
résille d’astres,
subtil réseau de la nuit dépeignée…

En vain,
Ma mémoire se gonfle en vain.

Auprés de toi,
Vie,
que je suis pauvre!
Reviens,
fût-ce dans un rôle laid,
me deliver du souvenir morose,
remplir mes yeux vides,
me contraindre à lever une paupière de plus.

En vain,
Ma mémoire se gonfle en vain,
gorgée de ses faux trésors.
Tout ce que je tire de là,
flétri, sans consistance,
est comme algue sortie de l’eau.

C’est toute ma vie que j’en tire,
toute remise en question
pour n’avoir pas su vivre en sorte
qu’an jour d’épreuve,
au jour de fete,
qu’aujourd’hui
j’aie pu prolonger d’un instant
cet instant coulé sans traces.

(About forgetting)
The curtain had been raised
five
maybe six times;
but it ended unlifted
staying down on the Actor.

I remain alone with my prey
palpitating now, it will escape me,
alone in a blurred crowd,
which will go far away, dispersing,
poring over a problem
of insufficient gifts.

I’ll try so hard to see her floating hair again
smudged in the stage set,
hairnet of stars,
delicate network of the uncombed night…

In vain
my memory swells in vain.
Beside you,
Life,
how poor am I!
Come back,
be it in an ugly role,
deliver me from morose
remembrances,
fill my empty eyes,
compel me to lift one more eyelid.

In vain.
My memory swells in vain,
gorged with its false treasures.
Everything I pull out from there,
wilted, spineless,
is like weeds come out of the water.

It’s my whole life that I pull from there,
Everything put back into question
for not having known how to live so that
on the day of reckoning
the festival day,
today
I would have been able to prolong for an instant
this instant sunk without trace.

English trans. by Susan de Muth

credits

from Aveux Non Avenus (2020) for soprano and string quartet, released November 15, 2020

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Thomas Oboe Lee Cambridge, Massachusetts

Thomas Oboe Lee was born in China in 1945. He lived in São Paulo, Brazil, for six years before coming to the United States in 1966. After graduating from the University of Pittsburgh, he studied composition at the New England Conservatory and Harvard University. He has been a member of the music faculty at Boston College since 1990. ... more

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