Puccini(Hmv 5) Poem by johannes lewinsky

He will return
He will return
Is the litany she renders
To the stars and to her maid
And to the fast receding
Waters in the bay

Yet nothing can evade
No human strength
Nor phantom of time
Nor of the night
Can dissuade her from
Her destiny

(I still capable am
Can
Though I might be
But half
The man I was
Can yet
Jealous be

Of your sweet face
So vulnerable tender
Which might but half be
Of this but I
No longer can
Troubled be
By this your face
So tender vulnerable

Nor jealous be
Of a life
So troubled shrunk
Away from

All trouble
Might impinge upon
And regret
That I must jealous be

Of this
Your face which I
No longer
Can encompass)


And we will die
And we will die
Another litany
To herself and to her child

For nothing given
Should be taken
So gratuitously

And the soul has a voice
Which speaks invincibly

Once lost it lurks
Like a canker within
Dictates
How to be
How to die
Enslaves its master
To its own
Primordial prerogatives

Custom may demand intransigence
But custom is only
The brace to the coffin
And has no bearing
On the final resolution

Fire itself, the arch-thief
Schicchi's concentric circle
Is not more tangible
Than the horns of this dilemma


Giaomo Puccini, regarded by many to be the natural successor to Giuseppe Verdi, though the two composers could not be more different. Puccini had a great facility for plangent melodies which captured the sufferings of dispprized lovers, and te broken hearted generally - hence his enduring popularity. Shortly before his death he was assailed by an ugly domestic tragedy in the form of the suicide of a young servant girl with whom Puccni's wife Elvira was convinced Puccini was having an affair. The girl's death seemed to echo the fate of Ch Cho San in Madama Butterfly, and was surely the inspiration for the character of Liu in Turandot.

NB. This poem centres around the fate of Cho Cho San. The words in italics are an imaginary soliloquy of Lieutenant BF Pinkerton - the American sailor who marries Cho Cho San……because it seems an amusing thing to do…with tragic consequences