and it is now

for soprano, clt, hp, perc, vla, cb, (conductor) | 2017

duration | 9’

text by Howard Namerov

premiered at Ades Performance Space (New York, NY);
Sarah Schultz, soprano
Cleo Goldberg, conductor

text

Now, starflake frozen on the windowpane
All of a winter night, the open hearth
Blazing beyond Andromeda, the sea-
Anemone and the downwind seed, O moment
Hastening, halting in a clockwise dust,
The time in all the hospitals is now,
Under the arc-lights where the sentry walks
His lonely wall it never moves from now,
The crying in the cell is also now,
And now is quiet in the tomb as now
Explodes inside the sun, and it is now
In the saddle of space, where argosies of dust
Sail outward blazing, and the mind of God,
The flash across the gap of being, thinks
In the instant absence of forever: now.

Howard Nemerov, “Moment”