We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.
/

lyrics

La voirie ! et à gauche, sous un gazon de trèfle et de luzerne, les sépultures d’un cimetière ; à droite, un gibet suspendu qui demande aux passants l’aumône comme un manchot.

Celui-là, tué d’hier, les loups lui ont déchiqueté la chair sur le col en si longues aiguillettes qu’on le dirait paré encore pour la cavalcade d’une touffe de rubans rouges.

Chaque nuit, dès que la lumière blémira le ciel, cette carcasse s’envolera, enfourchée par une sorcière qui l’éperonnera de l’os pointu de son talon, la bise soufflant dans l’orgue de ses flancs caverneux.

Et s’il était à cette heure taciturne un œil sans sommeil, ouvert dans quelque fosse du champ de repos, il se fermerait soudain, de peur de voir un spectre dans les étoiles.

Déjà la lune elle-même, clignant un œil, ne luit plus de l’autre que pour éclairer comme une chandelle flottante ce chien, maigre vagabond, qui lape l’eau d’un étang.

.........................................................


The garbage-dump! And to the left, beneath a lawn of clover and alfalfa, the graves in a cemetery; to the right, a suspended gibbet that requests alms from the passersby like a penguin.

This one, killed yesterday, the wolves have torn the flesh off its neck into such long shreds that one would say it was once again adorned for the cavalcade with a tuft of red ribbons.

Every night, as soon as the moon whitens the sky, this carcass will fly away, straddled by a sorceress who will spur it forward with a pointed bone in her heel, the breeze blowing in the organ of its cavernous flanks.

And if there was at that silent hour a pair of eyes without sleep, open in some pit on the ground of a graveyard, they would close all at once, for fear of seeing a specter in the stars.

Already the moon itself, winking one eye, shines only on the other to illuminate like a floating candle this dog, a thin vagabond, which laps the water of a pond.

credits

from Gaspard de la Nuit (2019) for soprano and string quartet, released June 4, 2019

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Thomas Oboe Lee image

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

contact / help

Contact Thomas Oboe Lee

Streaming and
Download help

Report this track or account

If you like Thomas Oboe Lee, you may also like:

Bandcamp Daily  your guide to the world of Bandcamp

On Bandcamp Radio

Featured guests are the golden-voiced Baby Rose and psyche soulsters Brainstory.
listen now