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Desert Light

from The Western Lands by Arthur Durkee

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about

Text/sound poetry, based on a poem by Arthur Durkee. The poem was intended to be read aloud by two voices, as the central body of the poem is two parallel bodies of text. The poem has been realized in this manner several times in live concert performance, as well as in this studio version.

lyrics

Poem "desert light" by Arthur Durkee

•

desert light



stone, sea, wind, light
earth, water, air, fire
wood
wood


if you stood naked on the hard
stone of this desert, the light would
burn you, clean to your bone.
you are the bones of the earth,
you are a thin sack of water.
you breathe the air into yourself,
and the air makes the fires
within you burn. the fire
of your mind. a gold stone
arch at the edge of the sky
where the mesa meets the desert
and the wind, carved by the wind
into a bolt of fragile light
or thunder, arcing from the ground
to the earth, gold in the setting sun.
if you stood here naked,
you would be burned free of the earth;
the light would flood the darkest
place of you, the air would dry
the sweat from your skin before
you could breathe it, your bones
would creak withi n you like
juniper sticks in a storm of wind.


living is the same thing as
being dead. the dead
are never weary, never drawn.
to live is to be torn asunder
by the shape of the day. a beast
turns in you, red-eyed, mewling,
clawed and torn; to fight death
is to win and lose. there is only
a thin membrane between the here
and the City, the place
of different light, the dry land.
under a sky with cold, bright stars
in patterns no one has ever seen,
under a sun hotter than
a fire in a forest,
in the hard ground,
under a sign like the hand
obscuring the moon,
under a ridge of sandstone
that slowly crumbles
under your hand,
etched by the light,
by the hard air.


nothing could live here.
this is where you must live.

•

Steve Paston, Stuart Hinds, readers

credits

from The Western Lands, released April 27, 2018
Realization and sound design by Stuart Hinds. Voices: Steve Paxton, Stuart Hinds. Additional sound design by Arthur Durkee.

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all rights reserved

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about

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Arthur Durkee Ann Arbor, Michigan

Arthur Durkee is a composer & songwriter who records & performs on Chapman Stick, bass, analog modular synths, bamboo & wood flutes, keys, frame drums, and voice. He has won awards for composed, notated music as well as for his recordings, & is a published poet, & designer & illustrator. ... more

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