Description
The clarinet accompanies the spoken voice (but, optionally, a choir or single voice can sing the words to the notes of the clarinet).
The tonality shimmers like the desert sun as it vacillates between octatonic and major/minor; it stays in major, sometimes with added sixths and fourths, as the elephants recall the good times, when they could enjoy shade and pools of water, but resumes the octatonic shimmering as they continue to trudge, albeit hopefully and with happy memories, through the hot desert sun.
It is performed here as an electronic preview of the instruments with the poem spoken by me and a summary English version by my father.