Sorrowful Songs

- after Henryk Gorecki's Third Symphony

Lento I
Dawn, September 1, 1939
Poland attacked, then Europe, the world at war.
Human pain and music, growling deep
as the thunder of artillery
rips life from its body.
Rising as the sound above all slaughter
a single female voice
from the epiphany of one note
mother of earth, do not cry
mother support me
mother, the end of creation?

Lento E Largo II
Death squads
you can hear their beat.
Nameless, slow but stampeding
in a chorus of fire, the architect's
of living destruction
massive, archaic.
As narrative to those who come after
survive child
mother, my blood.

Lento III
Death, the death to come
step off the path
to the end of all things.
Mother I am fading
almost gone
one breath from you
still the world collapsing
around your voice
mother.