Music: Roger Ames
Texts: Anne Sexton
with additional texts by Renee Neblett
Anne: O Mary, fragile Mother, hear me, hear me now although I do not know your words, The black rosary with its silver Christ lies unblessed in my hand for I am the unbeliever, I am the unbeliever. (1. Anne Sexton: FOR THE YEAR OF THE INSANE, 1963)
Anne: Gone I say Gone I say, and walk from the church, refusing the stiff procession to the grave. Priest: Requiem aeternam, dona eis Domine Anne, Priest and Chorus: Let the Dead ride alone in the hearse. It is June. I am tired of being brave. I am tired. I am tired. Gone, I say. Priest: Requiem aeternam, dona eis Domine.
Priest: Et lux perpetua luce at eis. Anne: We drive to the Cape. I cultivate myself where the sun gutters from the sky, where the sea swings in like an iron gate and we touch. Chorus: In another country people die. Anne: My darling, the wind falls in like stones from the white hearted water and when we touch we enter touch entirely. All: No one's alone. Men kill for this, or for as much. Chorus: And what of the dead? They lie without shoes in their stone boats. They are more like stones than the sea would be if it stopped. They refuse to be blessed, throat, eye, and knucklebone. (2. Anne Sexton: ALL MY PRETTY ONES) Priest: Et lux perpetua luce at eis. Chorus: Gone.
Chorus: Kyrie eleison. Christe eleison. Kyrie eleison. Anne: Oh fallen angel, the companion within me, whisper something holy. before you pinch me into the grave. (3. Anne Sexton: THE FALLEN ANGELS) Chorus: Kyrie eleison.
Priest and Chorus: Dies irae, Dies illa, Solvet saeclum in favilla. Them angels gonna be cut down like wheat. Them songs gonna be sliced with a razor. Them kitchen's gonna get a boulder in the belly, Them phones gonna be torn out at the root, There's power in the Lord, baby, [There's power in the Lord.] Quantus tremor est futurus, quando judex est venturus. Priest: and he's gonna turn off the moon. He's gonna nail you up in a closet Priest and Chorus: Cuncta stricte discusurus! Dies irae, dies illa, solvet saeclum in favilla. and there'll be no more Atlantic, no more dreams, no more seeds. Dies irae, dies illa, solvet saeclum in favilla. One noon as you walk out to the mailbox He'll snatch you up - a woman beside the road like a red mitten. Dies irae, Dies illa, solvet saeclum in favilla. Anne: There's a sack over my head, I can't see. I'm blind. The sea collapses. The sun is a bone. Hi ho the derry-o, we all fall down. Chorus: [There's power in the Lord, There's power in the Lord, baby, There's power in the Lord. Power!] (4. Adapted: Anne Sexton: HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME)
Anne: From naked stones of agony, I built a house for me; As a mason all alone I will raise it stone by stone. And ev'ry stone where I have bled will show a sign of dusty red. I have not gone away in vain, for I have good of all my pain. My spirit's quiet house will be built of naked stones I trod on roads where I lost sight of God. (5. Renee Neblett: NAKED STONES)
Chorus: Tuba miram, spargen sonum, per sepulchra regionum. Cum resurget creatura, judicanti responsura. We are all earthworms, digging into our wrinkles. We live beneath the ground and if Christ should come in the form of a plow and dig a furrow and push us up into the day we earthworms would be blinded by the sudden light and writhe in our distress. (6. Anne Sexton: THE WALL) Tuba miram spargens sonum mors stupebit et natura.
Priest: Lieber scriptus. proferetur in quo totum continetur. Unde mundus judicetur. Judex ergo cum sedebit. Quid quid latet apparebit. Nil inultum remanebit. Quid sum miser tunc dicturus. Quem patronum rogaturus Cum vix justus, rogaturus, cum vix justus.. Anne: (spoken) When mother left the room and left me in the big black and sent away my kitty to be fried in the camps and took away my blanket to wash the me out of it I lay in the soiled cold and prayed. It was a little jail in which I was never slapped with kisses. I was the engine that couldn't. Cold wigs blew on the trees outside and car lights flew like roosters on the ceiling. Cradle, you are a grave place. (7. Anne Sexton: HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME) Chorus: Rex tremendae majestatis. Qui salvandos salvas gratis. Salva me fons pietatis. Con futatis maledictis. Flammis acribus addictis. Voca me cum benedictis.
Anne: If ever it should be known let it be known by me. That face that hides behind the clouds of dead end corridors; If ever it should be known let it be known by me. The vacuum of thought locked, The frenzy of ecstasy far away; That face I lost in my alone, Let it be known by me, Let it be known. I feel I have before borne a presence touched in sweet, Some warm held me like a smile, A pulse of baby's tears that at my breast disappeared, And for a moment I believed. (8. Renee Neblett: IF EVER IT SHOULD BE KNOWN) O Mary, permit me this grace, [Permit me] this crossing over, [Permit me this[ although I am ugly, submerged in my own past, And my own madness. Although there are chairs I lie on the floor. only my hands are alive, touching beads. Word for word I stumble. A beginner, I feel your mouth touch mine. ....Closer and closer comes the hour of my death as I rearrange my face, grow back, grow undeveloped and straight-haired. All this is death. In the mind there is a thin alley called death and I move through it as Through water. My body is useless. It lies, curled like a dog on the carpet. It has given up. There are no words here except the half-learned, the Hail Mary and the full of grace. Now I have entered the year without words. I note the queer entrance and the exact voltage. Without words they exist. Without words one may touch bread and be handed bread and make no sound. [music up] O Mary, tender physician, come with powders and herbs for I am in the center. It is very small and the air is gray as in a steam house. I am handed wine as a child is handed milk. It is presented in a delicate glass with a round bowl and a thin lip. The wine itself is pitch-colored, musty and secret. The glass rises on its own toward my mouth and I notice this and understand this only because it has happened. I have this fear of coughing but I do not speak, a fear of rain, a fear of the horseman who comes riding into my mouth. The glass tilts in on its own and I am on fire. I see two thin streaks burn down my chin. I see myself as one would see another. I have been cut in two. O Mary, open your eyelids. I am in the domain of silence, The kingdom of the crazy and the sleeper. There is blood here And I have eaten it. O mother of the womb, Did I come for blood alone? O little mother, I am in myth own mind. I am locked in the wrong house. (9. Anne Sexton: FOR THE YEAR OF THE INSANE) I dread, I sense a ragged edge; The crippling side of the living dead, The nerves exposed are finely shred Through redemption in believing; Faith is the face of God. (10. Renee Neblett: A RAGGED EDGE)
Priest and Chorus: Recordare Jesu pie; quod sum causa tuae viae. Ne me perdas ille die; Quarens me se disti lastus. Lassus redimisti, crucem passus, tantus labor non sit cassus. Ingemisco tanquam reus. Culparubet vultus meus. Supplicanti parce Deus, Qui Mariam absolvisti, et la tronen exaudisti, Mihi quoque spem dedesti. Supplicanti parce Deus. Anne: O Mary, fragile mother, Hear me, hear me now, Although I do not know your words. The black rosary with its silver Christ Lies unblessed in my hand. For I am the unbeliever, I am the unbeliever. 11. Anne Sexton: Ibid number 1
Chorus: Smeared across indignant, a sunset to the sky! I'll make the unbelievers focus keen their eye. Born in mighty pellets, I'll linger to the ground. Baptize the unbelievers with water as a crown. I will burst the earth with plenty, flaunt a heavy full spring breast; Beg the wary unbelievers to lay their heads and rest. I will spin like cotton candy the most delicate of snow. Pattern more than billions, and gift them as I go. I will labor fierce unending, no two days shall be the same. And the very thought of yesterday will pave tomorrow's gain. And in these moments when Divine seems less than right, I will give man inner vision to complement my sight. (11. Renee Neblett: INNER VISION) Priest: Sanctus, sanctus! Sanctus Dominus Deus sabaoth. Pleni sunt caeli et terra gloria tua. Hosanna in excelsis.
Chorus: Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi, Dona eis requiem. Sempiternam, lux aeterna, luceat eis. Luce at eis Domine. Priest: For as she eats wisdom like the halves of a pear she puts one foot in front of the other. She climbs the dark wing. For death comes to friends, to parents, to sisters. Death comes with its bagful of pain yet they do not curse the key they were given to hold. Chorus: Luce at eis Domine. Priest: For as Anne walks the music walks and the family lies down in milk. (12. Anne Sexton: Tenth Psalm, O YE TONGUES)
Chorus: Anne, Anne, flee on your donkey, flee this sad hotel. Ride out on some hairy beast, flee this sad hotel. Gallop backward pressing your buttocks to his withers, sit to his clumsy gait somehow. Ride out, ride out any old way you choose. Ride out! Priest: In this place everyone talks to his own mouth. That's what it means to be crazy. Those we loved best died of it: The fool's disease. (13. Anne Sexton: FLEE ON YOUR DONKEY) Priest and Chorus: Anne, Anne, flee on your donkey, flee this sad hotel. Ride out on some hairy beast, flee this sad hotel. Ride out, ride out, ride out!
Anne and chorus: When they turn the sun on again I'll plant children under it, I'll light up my soul with a match and let it sing, I'll take my mother and soap her up, I'll take my bones and polish them, I'll vacuum up my stale hair, I'll pay all my neighbors' bad debts, I'll write a poem called yellow and put my lips down to drink it up, I'll feed myself spoonfuls of heat and everyone will be home playing with their wings and the planet will shudder with all those smiles and there will be no poison anywhere, no plague in the sky [anywhere] and there will be a mother broth for all of the people and we will never die, not one of us, we'll go on won't we? [We'll go on, won't we?] (14. Anne Sexton: YELLOW) Chorus: Amen. Amen.