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Before Me
$10.00
suggested price
I wrote this piece for the 2012 Three Twelve album, Something Begun, but we decided it was too similar in feel to the "Still / This Tree" diptych we'd already committed to, so we saved "Before Me" for a later project. (Oh well.) The piece is much less "mainstream tonal" than most of my other works, and in fact a diligent observer will notice some Hauer-esque melodic retrogrades and inversions, that help to give the piece its unsettled consistency. Don't worry too much about the meter changes, either—as long as the pianist and the vocalist can hit the downbeats more or less together, the piece works just fine.
Lyrics
The sun is high as I step out of the wood,
and shadows that stretched long this morning have gone.
The grass is tall, and it slows my certain step
as insects fling themselves from shelter to flight.
There now before me, a wall of ancient stone climbs to the sky.
Weathered and crumbling, these stones stood long before my heart began to beat.
A doorway yawns where great timbers hinged ago,
protecting sacred space within and without.
The roof is gone: lichened beams across the floor.
The walls that held it, now unburdened, stand tall.
Somehow, above me, the sun, trapped by these walls, moves ever on,
crossing horizons as one light sets, and in its place, a million shine.
Somehow within me, the wanderer finds home here in the dark.
I set my pack down, and there we stand, outside of time,
those stones and I.
©2011 David M. Glasgow (ASCAP)
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