Mark Aspen

English National Opera                 Mini-Opera

Amores  by Keith Wait

From The Sweeper of Dreams.

[Characters: A young child, Ion; the Lovers, Corinna and Tristan.]

ION:

In the beginning, I wanted life

But my world was without form, and void.

I longed for mountains and for oceans

For angels and owls, not kingdoms and castles.

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TRISTAN:

We have moved in a different world

Along the very brink of time

CORINNA:

I feel, you know, that love and death are very close.

LOVERS:

At the top of the pendulum’s swing

Where everything begins and ends

We lay in Xanadu floating on a dream.

CORINNA:

Take me now to oblivion where

Our years that have passed, our centuries yet to come

All stop and concentrate upon this moment.

TRISTAN:

The garden stands on the perfumed clifftop

The acrid waves are pounding underneath

Their salty tears may splash and reach

And open up a breach

In time.

CORINNA:

Hold time.

For now we melt as one.

At our twilight moon in silent passion

The world waits.

And all our love and all our spirit

Stand in abeyance for eternity.

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ION:

In the middle there was not time

Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters

There are sages who are not butterflies

A life I never wore, a day to which I never woke.

———————————————————————————–

LOVERS:

We lovers would so gently slip away

If urgent beauty eased its plunging stress

And let us fade together with the day

Into that silent world of gentleness.

Then drowsy mists would each warm limb caress

And mingle our two perfumes into one

As pulsing bodies sink on tenderness

If all the night could be for us alone.

CORINNA:

That dawn would come more golden than the sun,

Whose kiss the blue and blushful haze of night

Returns with pink looks and shyly runs;

TRISTAN:

My arms would hold such beauty fresh in sight

Arising like the rainbow’s hopeful dove

To touch my heart and ever seal our love.

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ION:

In the ending, life is forfeit.

The leaves of the tree are for the healing.

The Sweeper talks about the weather

LOVERS:

Drops of moisture feel their careful way

Across the misted window of our world,

Mirror broken with a cracked and crazy web

Echoes the silence that we should have shared.

TRISTAN:

Moist and hard our mouths were pushed together

Tongue against tongue in long and secret longing

Probing deep the secrets of your bower.

I could taste the pulsing fountain welling.

Struggling below the creature fought for breath.

Cruelly, coldly, you stifled all its cries.

After rope, with rope you bound its beauty

Within your fear, and dared not heed its sighs.

Your mouth was hardened.  The neck of the golden

Swan was fettered, barred in a whitewashed grille.

CORINNA:

I have the impression,

TRISTAN:                                             slowly you said,

CORINNA:

That you are a stubborn man …… …… ……

TRISTAN:

I could have bathed in your cleansing fountain

To lift and purify my aching soul

But the gush did not come but silently

And left me wanting, needing to be whole.

Again you lead me in the labyrinth

Through a mirrored maze where I cannot reach,

Behind a barrier of glinting glass,

Your half-known beauty and its fleeting touch.

Do you remember I told you of my dream?

Bitter- honey moon where dark corridors

Led between a thousand rooms in oaken gloom

Unlit stairs ended in mocking mirrors.

In which room did you wait arched and spurting

Where the perfume dried?

Noli me tangere.

The corridors all end now in mirrors.

The mouth is shut.

Drops of moisture feel their careful way

Across the misted window of our world,

Mirror broken with a cracked and crazy web

Echoes the silence that we should have shared.

© K.F.Wait, May 2012, under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Sharealike licence