Happiness

Song Cycle by Freya Waley-Cohen (b. 1989)

1. You envied the stars their height
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
The day folded;
Like a Cabbage White closing its wings
On a windowsill.

With the old, worn-out risk,
the unexplainable, skewed
trigonometry
of drunkenness

you climbed the fire escape.

Got on the roof.
But once you were there, you
envied the stars

their height

and could not get back down.

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Researcher for this page: Joost van der Linden [Guest Editor]

2. Still Light
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
You picture your mother like a tree
 [ ... ]

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3. Happiness
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
Yesterday it appeared to me in the form of two purple
 [ ... ]

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4. An Avoidance
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
I could go around all evening dropping slices of lime
 [ ... ]

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5. Ease
 (Sung text)

Subtitle: (Or a poem about how things are now’)

Language: English 
Lined coat, warm cap, felt slippers,
In the little tower, at the low window, sitting over the sunken stove.
Body at ease, heart at peace; nothing to wake early for
Do the courtiers in the Western Capital know of these things, or not?

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Researcher for this page: Joost van der Linden [Guest Editor]
Total word count: 500