Description
Based on my vocal setting of a poem by the surrealist poet Hugh Sykes-Davies.
The poem is as follows:
The house was empty and
the people of the house
gone many months
Months for the weevil
for the patient worm
timber-mole softly tunnelling
for the parliament of rats
Footsteps slink past
damp walls
down
long
corridors
Slow feet
warily scuff
bare boards
The much-bitten
tapestry
holds
many
moths
In a certain curtain’d room
the halting steps evade
chairs white shrouded
To twitch the winding-sheet
around a grand piano
thin phalanx of sound
sharp rat’s teeth edge yellow
with decay
The much-bitten
tapestry
holds
many
moths
On rat’s teeth-edge
fingers preparate
hesitate
Then falling send
as tenantry
damp-muffled chords
rusting strings
a still-born song