A Suite of Dances for the Voice

1. Allemande Petals of the rose unfols e ye can see drifts down to brown and rich dark loam; the waiting fields are home to lost and wandering seed; and honey sweet the clover blossoms, sheltering the raindrops swept across the web of gathering clouds and calling now across the sky, are promise, gift and garment woven clover red and green; each nods its dro wsy head beneath the sun this long and golden afternoon of warm and new beginning; only shadows grow, long fingers reaching pools of umber - dark magenta clouds are whispering the cold to come, though petals of the rose unfold. 2. Courante The earth's great heart is beating. Soft, the leaves of red and gold and brown are drifting down and sunlight turns the apple trees to fountains - green and russet flow against the blue of sky and cloud and shadow gather darkness, fall and roses turn their eyelids inward, listening still to voices singing chill and cold that silver stars will fall - and falling sing the song the eart h's great heart is beating. 3. Bourree Now against the whips of stars crystals burn and fly, silver-touch the turning night, fall and fill the waiting sky: shards of light, in tears of ice, frozen, dance and die . . . 4. Pavane Beneath the cold mantle of dark in the east is the sound of the heartbeat, the calm steady rhythm of life and its dance: the silver and song of the sky and the sea, the gentle slow curve of the stem of the rose, the joy and the sadness of leaf fall in autumn, the simple refrain of the flower and seed, the color and pathway of raindrop and fire. And earth, in russet and green and gold, turns now in its warm bed toward the sun and the petals that, slow, unfold.