hand2ear

Finding Neverland

2009-07-03T14:06:00.002-04:00

Call me a sentimental fool, but the death scene in the movie 'Finding Neverland' never fails to move me.

But then, I harbor a hope that fairies really exist, and if so that they are something like the ones in 'Midsummer Night's Dream'; free to play in the woods and play tricks on mortals.

Taverner and transcendent goodness

2009-06-20T19:05:00.002-04:00

I went to the Church of the Advent on Beacon Hill in Boston last night to hear their magnificent choir sing the 'O Michael' Mass by John Taverner and motets by Peter Philips, Robert Parsons, and Orlando Gibbons. The performances were uniformly excellent; the group sounds wonderful and tunes so well that the thickest textures seldom felt clogged or hazy. There were so many memorable moments that I will not even try to list them; these were real composers, not hacks, and they each exhibit personal qualities within their common musical language.

I was most impressed with the Taverner piece, however. It seemed gracious and generous, full of radiance and goodness. In some ways it reminded me of the 3rd Piano Sonata of Boulez. Neither piece really takes you on a journey; instead you float on an undulating bed of sound. But the differences are huge. With Boulez the texture is dissonant and often jarring, and the piano sound is sharply crystalline. With Taverner, the sounds are consonant and the voices are warm and sensuous.

Hearing the Taverner, I felt as if I were riding on a raft in Paradise. Everything was safe and benign, and I didn't care where the raft was going, because it was Paradise. The music seemed to be the embodiment of a vision of transcendent goodness.

That vision is one of the best things about Christianity, and one of the major reasons that consider myself a Christian. That vision sustains and inspires me.

A conversation with a skeptic after the concert reminded me that this music is difficult for most people to understand. There are no big repetitive tunes to hum, and little in the way of conflict and resolution in the structural sense.

But an hour spent in Taverner's heaven was just what I needed.

A Koan by Emily Dickinson

2009-01-28T15:15:00.001-05:00

I'm reading Bring Me the Rhinoceros by John Tarrant, who presents a number of Zen koans and associated stories. He quotes Emily Dickinson in one of the chapter headings:

"Friday I tasted life. It was a vast morsel. A Circus passed the house - still I feel the red in my mind though the drums are out. The lawn is full of south and the odors tangle, and I hear today for the first time the river in the tree."

This strikes me with great force every time I pass my eyes over it. It is like a hallucination or a peek into the world of an alien mind. I can't make logical sense of it, but it seems true, and it makes reality seem more real.

I guess this is what koans are supposed to do.

String Quartets, with more to come

2009-01-01T13:12:00.002-05:00

I am beginning to put some of my scores onto Lulu.com, so that people can order copies.

Here is the link to my storefront:

http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=3542096

I have put scores of my two string quartets there, and more will follow.

The Diving Bell and Butterfly

2009-01-01T12:49:00.002-05:00

In this film, it was not the story that moved me, but the faces of the women and children, and the ocean, and the beautiful camerawork, and the exquisite sense of timing.

I love to look at faces anyway, but the main character ('Jean-Do') cannot move or speak, and human faces are perhaps the most meaningful things that he sees. He learns to communicate using eye-blinks, writes a book, and tries in small ways to mend some of the broken things in his life.

I would have liked more depth to Jean-Do's character; except for his paralysis, there seems to be very little there in the way of life choices. His relationship with his father is important and touching - his rocky relationships with women, less so.

The film's most memorable scene for me: Jean-Do is dreaming that a young, 19th-century woman is wheeling him down a deserted hall in his wheelchair. He suddenly can move, and he turns and kneels on the seat and kisses the woman. This is one of the most erotic and least salacious things that I have ever seen.

Chuang Tzu

2008-09-21T21:44:00.001-04:00

Reading the Thomas Merton book on Chuang Tzu. The latter is full of little stories and parables, but they remind me more of Kafka than Jesus. 'The Hat Saleman and the Capable Ruler' is a good example, because it leaves you wondering if the (presumably enlightened) ruler is in a state of bliss or distraught.

Like Kafka's parables, these suggest much more than they state; each one seems to promise a novel's-worth of story.

I want to read those novels.

ASUS sublaptop first look

2008-08-01T16:28:00.001-04:00

Just got a tiny Asus computer to take along on an upcoming vacation, and it seems pretty nice - about the size of a large paperback. You can hook up a full-sized keyboard and display if you want. No CD drive, but this thing is the size of a mid-sized paperback novel, so you wouldn't expect one. It has 3 USB ports for extras. The small keys don't really bother me, as I'm not a touch-typist.

It comes with enough software to get me writing by the lake, that's what I aim to do.

Sound clips, not bagels

2008-07-28T23:41:00.001-04:00

I attended PodCast Boston a week and a day ago, and it gave me all sorts of ideas.

Because I consider myself to be a "content provider", that is a producer rather than a merchant or consumer, I decided to try to make some content and sell it online, a bit like a bagel vendor.

But I am hawking sound clips that I have composed. Yes, I know that other people do this (at outrageous prices, too!), but nobody offers the clips that I make but me, for better or worse.

These are tiny compositions and are cranky or delicate; some are just weird.

Check out my site: Your Own Web Music

Technorati Tags: sound clips,tiny compositions,PodCamp Boston

Waiting for Random House

2008-07-24T11:03:00.001-04:00

Technorati Tags: Random House,Gift from the Sea,Anne Morrow Lindbergh

I wrote to Random House about a month ago to ask for permission to use part of Gift from the Sea as the text for a piece of music. I used snail mail, because that's what I always have done in the past. I am dying to get started composing, but still no word from the publishers. I don't see why this should take so long - there's no risk to them, after all.

This is why I most often write my own texts these days.

However, the Anne Morrow Lindbergh words are beautiful and worth waiting for, I guess...

Playing with Picassa

2008-07-23T00:59:00.000-04:00

I'm working on putting up a web site, and in playing with Picassa, I created the image you see here. You wouldn't believe how rudimentary the image was before I worked it over digitally. Nice, Eh?

Technorati Tags: Picassa

Go and see this play!

2008-07-21T18:31:00.001-04:00

First, a disclaimer - I am the father of the director of the play(Gerritt Turner), and not the most unbiased bloke on my block, therefore.

Check out the web site: Self-portrait As Schiele

The play is in the NY Fringe Festival in August. I have read versions of the script as it was in progress, and it looks pretty interesting. A woman in a hospital keeps seeing Egon Schiele, the great expressionist artist. He infects her with Schiele memes, and very odd things happen to her and the other characters.

Having read the script, I can't wait to see this thing. In person it should be ten times better.

Technorati Tags: NY Fringe,Egon Schiele,memes,Gerritt Turner,Mark Lindberg,Elsa Carette,Elizabeth Hess,Adam Hyland,Doug Paulson

Quite a day of Web 2.0 action

2008-07-21T18:01:00.001-04:00

Whew! Setting up Facebook, looking at Tweeter messages, fielding emails, some from old friends and some from new ones (PodCamp Boston 2008), etc.

The caricature that I did of myself has turned out to be quite useful:

I am using it for Tweeter, FaceBook, and Technorati.

This stuff is exhilarating, actually. Today I had two ideas for micro-businesses for myself as a content provider.

Time to get to work on those.

Technorati Tags: FaceBook,Tweeter,PodCamp,Boston,micro-businesses

Looking for a wee job

2008-06-06T16:09:00.002-04:00

Ah, well, so I got laid off last week. Not a new experience, so I'm not too upset. I'm taking stock of my skills and options, and also am hoping to attend to some things which I have been neglecting.

Joined an artist's site

2008-06-06T15:53:00.002-04:00

I joined a new website for artists, including composers. Here is the link to my page there:

http://buncut.ning.com/profile/CharlesTurner

It's nicely run by artist Phillip Letts. Check it out.

NYC ComicCon

2008-04-20T22:13:00.003-04:00

Having developed an interest in comics recently, I took a day off and went to the NY ComicCon over the weekend. It was impressive in many ways, just as comics themselves are; often trashy and crowded, but full of wonderful energy and creativity.

It was great to hear Neal Gaiman read and answer questions and hear Grant Morrison kibitzing with the fans in his thick Scots accent. I also went to a panel of (relatively) old-time great comic artists and later got to talk to Carmine Infantino, whose Flash and Adam Strange comics seemed so imaginative and visually arresting when I was a pre-teen.

I also spoke to David Mack and bought some issues of his Kabuki comic that I was missing. He was just as nice as I thought he would be. He and so many of the other artists exhibit an impressive mastery of drawing and page composition.

Ultimately the immense crowds (mostly men in black tee-shirts, it seemed) made me claustrophobic, and I escaped the Javits Center for a quiet restaurant with my son. But comics seem to be full of vitality these days.

Blockhead and Bubble Boy

2008-04-20T22:04:00.003-04:00

Two fellows who showed up in my sketch book one day.

Chance and Circumstance

2007-04-18T13:10:00.000-04:00

Carolyn Brown's book is a personal account of her dance career as a member of the Merce Cunningham dance troupe. It's a very enjoyable book to read, full of her reactions to the important people and events in her life. It does not attempt to be scholarly, and sometimes I wish it were a bit more detailed.

What interests me most about the book is hearing a dancer talk about dancing; what makes her do it, what the ups and downs are, performing versus training, her views on other dancers and choreographers, touring, etc.

What impresses me about Brown and the other Cunningham dancers is how disciplined they were for so little worldly reward. They endured many years of critical disparagement and poverty as they rehearsed with almost military intensity. Their devotion to their art surely must be an example to the rest of us.

Thanks for the book, Carolyn.

And now I want to see the dances themselves!

Catalog d'oiseaux

2007-04-15T20:42:00.000-04:00

How we change.

Listening to Messiaen's "Catalog d'oiseaux" today brings back memories of listening to it 25 years ago and not liking it very much. It seemed like such a crazy enterprise, and the pieces didn't even seem to be trying for any kind of unity or development. It seemed like swatches of music stuck together in a patchwork. The swatches themselves were interesting but also did not develop within themselves. The repetition drove me crazy.

Today, listening to the Anatol Ugorski recording, I think that I must have been young and impatient. The pieces seem immensely vibrant, written in a musical language of great originality and power.

It may be partly due to recording technology; Ugorski's piano sounds fantastic, whereas the older LPs (Loriod playing?) probably were analog recordings. It could be Ugorski's playing, too; I think he probably takes faster tempi and possibly uses less pedal.

But I am a more patient listener now, more accustomed to music that is not going anywhere. Striving and becoming is not everything; listening to Messiaen is more like prayer than drama, and sometimes prayer is just what we need.

New string quartets

2007-01-15T23:47:00.000-05:00

I have added the scores of two new string quartets to the 'Chamber Music' page of my website.
There are also lousy computer-generated mp3 files that may give you some idea of how the music might sound.

The first quartet is in four movements and lasts about 30 minutes. The first movement is a diverse mixture of slow and fast music; the next two movements are titled 'scherzo', and the finale is a
moderate-tempo piece that draws on shaped-note music and bluegrass fiddling, to some degree.

The second quartet was designed to be quite different from the first. The movements are shorter, and the harmonic and gestural language is much more high-modernist. The whole thing lasts about 12 minutes or so. The movements have impressionistic titles (Clouds, Stones, Creatures, Human); I don't take these very seriously.

I hope to get better recordings of these some day soon.

Enjoy...

Irony?

2006-07-27T15:24:00.000-04:00

Irony: what does it do for us? Why should we like it?

Why do the wicked prosper? as the Bible often asks.

We try to do something, and our efforts produce the opposite result.

We think we understand something, but we are grossly mistaken.

'Delicious irony' is a phrase that one sometimes hears. I suppose the irony is delicious when someone else is the victim of it, especially someone that we do not care for.

It seems that enjoyment of irony is part of a world-view that says that everything good is alloyed with bad, that there is nothing in life that is purely good or bad.

But this world-view does not necessarily explain the pleasure that people get from irony. Maybe that pleasure comes from the feeling of superiority we get as observers. Those who do not participate in the action get a compensatory ego-boost. Bully for them.

This might explain the popularity of irony in a world which more and more makes us spectators.

Greetings

2006-05-15T22:31:00.000-04:00

greetings from the year 2005
on the campus of friendship
drastic changes make the holidays very different
but glad to be living
all the maintainence taken care of
one grandson
a granddaughter in November
enjoyed the videos
and the ceremony
a whole university of friends
health seems to be my condition

Back and forth with G.G.

2006-02-12T10:00:00.000-05:00

need to chanGe the oil
learn kaRate
play in the tournamEnt of gnomes
write a cataloGue entry
this cOnstant back and
foRth and back
limits my realitY

nothing is Guaranteed
except Instability
in the worLd
it's chalLenging
and quEstioning things
iS always
imPortant work
so that our anxIety
has a purposE

A leaf

2005-09-11T18:59:00.000-04:00

Cryptonomicon

2005-09-11T18:26:00.000-04:00

I seldom read novels, really. Well, I seldom read them to the end, and I am often disappointed when I do, feeling that I have wasted a lot of time for very little long-term gain.

Neal Stephenson's novel Cryptonomicon is 1,152 pages long, in the crappy paperback volume that I am going to throw away the minute I finish it, probably late tonight.

It takes a lot of clever writing and plotting to keep me going on a novel of this size. A few laughs also help, and I find this book one of the most amusing things that I have read in 20 years of so, since I read Enderby, by Anthony Burgess. It is also the kind of book that whips your head around a few times, so that afterwards, you think a little differently.

I read a book on the history of codes and ciphers when I was in high school, and it interested me a lot, though it got only as far as the Vigenere scheme. Neal's book goes a great deal further, because cryptography has gone much further.

But really it is the humor and entertaining similes that will force me to buy a better copy someday and reread it.

New shakuhachi pieces

2005-07-25T22:57:00.000-04:00

I have added several new pieces to the shakuhachi scores page.

There is a new solo piece in western notation, called 'No Answers', and a second solo piece written in Kinko-ryu notation. This is handwritten and scanned in as a JPG file.

I have added three violin-shakuhachi duets that I wrote to play with a friend at work who is also a student. 'Water Mirror has the hardest violin part, and 'Pear Tree Branch' the most difficult shakuhachi part, I think.

Last is a piece which I wrote and performed in church recently - I sang the voice part and played the shakuhachi part, accompanied by a keyboard koto sound. This is written in the pseudo-Japanese style of my chamber opera 'Komachi'.

Mistake corrected

2005-04-11T21:41:00.000-04:00

I have updated my last posted composition because of an error in the second piece in the set. My transliteration/annotation of the Chinese text had the wrong 'tone' or 'intonation' for one of the words - this had to be changed to make the text comprehensible.

I doubt this has caused anyone any inconvenience, but if so, my apologies.

Three Tang Poems

2005-03-11T22:57:00.000-05:00

I have placed some new scores and Midi files onto the 'Choral' page of my web site. These three pieces for SATB choir with piano are intended to be performed as a set. The poems together contain the faint outline of a story - a Chinese monk prepares for the visit of a brother from Japan, and in the third poem, the Japanese monk sails home in his little boat.

The texts are in the original Mandarin - much thanks to Jerry Huang of the Chinese Chorus of Cambridge for his detailed help and critiques of the text setting. Thanks also to Heather Chu, director of the chorus, for suggesting that I might write something for them.

Note about 'Going to Sleep'

2005-01-19T22:06:00.000-05:00

Eh, I forgot to mention that I have an MP3 of a music-boxish accompaniment for the song, so if you would like to have that, just email me at charlesturner9(at-sign)yahoo.com.

Pattern Recognition

2005-01-19T21:53:00.000-05:00

Just finished a novel by cyber-punker William Gibson, called Pattern Recognition. It's a sort of mystery/thriller set in the present - no fancy sci-fi trappings here, though there is a lot of techie talk.

The protagonist is a sort of fashion scout consultant who has great street sense for fashion and a number of phobias towards certain advertising labels. The mystery involves pieces of film footage that are left around on the Net: who is leaving them, and is there hidden spy-type info encrypted in them?

There's a nice balance of physical action, detailed observation (often of clothing) and inner world in this novel, and it's extremely well plotted and paced. I really cared about the characters, especially Cayse Pollard, with her neuroses and courage. She reminded me a bit of my favorite hard-boiled woman warrior, Smilla in Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg.

Well done, William Gibson!

Another new art song

2005-01-19T21:45:00.000-05:00

I just added a new song, Going to Sleep, to my web site. It's repetitive and strophic, but the accompaniment is rhythmically ambiguous in a way that keeps it interesting, I think. The singing range is not wide, and it should be easy to sing, if you can count.

The song is all about looking at your newborn baby and realizing what an immense undertaking a life is, and how delicate.

As I say in the score, the accompaniment should be rather mechanical, but the voice should be expressive.

New piece for student cellists

2005-01-06T22:02:00.000-05:00

I have put a new piece for four cellos on the Chamber Music page of my web site (www.hand2ear.org). It is supposed to be relatively easy to play - it may be that only the cello 1 part goes out of first position, but I didn't check carefully. It's not a very long piece, and the rhythms are pretty simple, but the journey is worthwhile, I think. I wrote this for Mollie Glazer, a cello player, teacher and composer who lives on Nantucket.

Happy playing...

Another essential book

2005-01-02T14:03:00.000-05:00

Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate--The Essential Guide for Progressives
by George Lakoff

Conservatives ought to read this book, too, because it is such a good analysis of conservative as well as progressive values. Revelatory!

An essential book

2005-01-02T13:53:00.000-05:00

Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre
by Keith Johnstone

This book ought to be read by EVERYBODY, not just people interested in theater. It discusses the ways that education harms us and ways to make life full and colorful. It examines the ways that we become blocked emotionally and imaginatively, and gives exercises to free us. The chapters on Mask and trance are amazing.

I can't imagine a person reading this book and not being changed for the better.

A new song added

2004-12-23T01:25:00.000-05:00

I have added a new song, 'Come Away, Death', to the Songs score page on my web site (www.hand2ear.org). I have also put up PDF versions of the songs for people who have trouble with the Sibelius Scorch plugin.

The song is a simple setting of the text from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. I originally wanted to write it as a real theater song, but the character of the music makes it quite unusable for stage. Nevertheless, I like the song as it is - a dreamy and rather passionate art song.

Progressive/repetitive formal schemas

2004-12-01T17:16:00.000-05:00

ABC
ABCD
_BCD
_BCDE
__CDE
__CDEF

etc.

ABC
_BCA
_BCD
__CDB
__CDE

etc.

ways to move forward (with repetition) in a time-based piece (music, dance, video, perhaps theater)

could be layered on top of each other in a medium that admits to layering

From a letter of Kafka

2004-12-01T13:03:00.000-05:00

"The books we need are the kind that act upon us like a misfortune, that make us suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we were on the verge of suicide, or lost in a forest remote from all human habitation - a book should serve as the axe for the frozen sea within us."

Perhaps this is true. But I can think of other kinds of books that I want.

Mister Flint

2004-11-26T13:02:00.000-05:00

metiCulously carved
Human faces
intricate hIeroglyphs
filled with Combinations
of calligrapHic lines -
so-callEd bald, tall
and ecceNtric

mister flInt's jewels
were collecTed from
an idealiZed ruin
by European observers

thief
scholar
tall
bald
eccentric
so-called
Mister Flint

Cantata: the ancient astronomers

2004-11-19T11:39:00.000-05:00

the heavens were a vast sphere, made of fire

dimidium ejus spati

for space was infinite and had no center

diapason

its base was the apparent disc of the sun
sixty times the equatorial radius of earth

a cone had its apex at the center of the earth
the distance to the moon and back

each planet lived in spheres numbered four

three spheres confined the moon

fere tantundem

he did not believe in the large parallax

in the region of the clouds and winds
the horizon equally divided the ecliptic

the homocentric spheres

sescuplum

why did the sun show no movement in lattitude?

diapason

the error disappeared at syzygy
in the pure and liquid air of continual light

dimidium

the shadow of the earth reached the sun's orbit
the planets continued gliding in their epicycles

in the lunar parallax
he observed the distances of zenith
at noon for three hundred stadia he saw no shadows

for space was infinite and had no center

dimidium

for space was a sphere, and earth was its center

diapason

Eudoxus
Hipparchus
Thales
Menelaus
Ptolemy
Kleomedes
Archimedes
Posidonius
Theon

A structural idea - time or space

2004-11-17T13:23:00.000-05:00

layer 1) abcdea_b_c_d_e_a__b__c__d__e__
layer 2) a_b_c_d_e_a__b__c__d__e__abcde
layer 3) a__b__c__d__e__abcdea_b_c_d_e_

time/space --->

Daniel Webster on Military conscription

2004-11-06T18:26:00.000-05:00

...Where is it written in the Constitution, in what article or section is it contained, that you may take children from their parents, and compel them to fight the battles of any war in which the folly or the wickedness of government may engage it?

Under what concealment has this power lain hidden which now for the first time comes forth, with a tremendous and baleful aspect, to trample down and destroy the dearest rights of personal liberty? Who will show me any Constitutional injunction which makes it the duty of the American people to surrender everything valuable in life, and even life itself, not when the safety of their country and its liberties may demand the sacrifice, but whenever the purposes of an ambitious and mischievous government may require it?

Sir, I almost disdain to go to quotations and references to prove that such an abominable doctrine has no foundation in the Constitution of the country. It is enough to know that that instrument was intended as the basis of a free government, and that the power contended for is incompatible with any notion of personal liberty. An attempt to maintain this doctrine upon the provisions of the Constitution is an exercise of perverse ingenuity to extract slavery from substance of a free government.

Lovely Child

2004-10-31T13:11:00.000-05:00

my tongUe speaks
to aNy ear;
Days go by,
growing moRe
unsEasonable;
theSe days that remain -
it doeSn't
mattEr how many.
Day turns to night;
I bake Bread for you,
mY lovely
chiLd.
hOw did you gain
the silVer which
enslavEs you?

from Rumi 10-24-03

James Tenney's Forms I-IV

2004-10-27T01:18:00.000-04:00

Reading the liner notes of the Hat Art recording of James Tenney's Forms leads one to expect some kind of dry, conceptual exercise. Each has a simple structure made by slowly adding and subtracting tones from a sound mass produced by sixteen players who play single pitches at indeterminate but regular times. The pitches are derived from the harmonic series, and this becomes apparent at the end of the second piece, which becomes a dominant 7th chord, then the 7th goes away, leaving a major chord, etc.

But the effect of this is anything but dry. The busy sections seem to buzz and hum with life, and when the music becomes low and soft, it feels like an underground river with occasional sparkles of light in the darkness.

It has been a long time since I have heard a piece of new music this original and beautiful. The music seems to hold within it the whole world of phenomena and feeling. In its inexorable, non-dramatic way, it is very moving.

The four pieces are interleaved with four other works, one each by Varese, Cage, Wolpe, and Feldman. Tenney has dedicated one of the Forms to each of these composers. If Tenney feels indebted to these composers, he has paid his debt most generously.

Joseph Cornell

2004-10-23T10:25:00.000-04:00

The obJects that he used -
marbles and wOoden perches,
even a Stray cockatoo -
found thEir way into
cabinets of sParseness;
many of tHem unoccupied.

Joseph Cornell.

The exhibition Consisted
of bOx constructions,
also CamelopaRdalis...
He iNcorporated constellations,
figurEs of Auriga,
coLumns, seashells -
the compLex nature of existence.

Joseph Cornell.

12/02

Aria

2004-10-23T10:20:00.000-04:00

How Dismal!
All of my fleas
bite Me bloody!
DooM's apprentice
opeNs his
massive mAw,
drooling wiTh pleasure!
Oh, my paIns
and sOrrows!
None worse
than black despaiR!
In my distrEss
I calleD, "Willie, Willie!"
and whEn they
carried hiM hither,
the dolPhins leapt high,
yeT soon fell back again.
All while the brIght moon
shOne, sizzling
its inarticulate soNg!
How Dismal!
they tickle mE
and I'm All itchy!
and wiTh all of this singing
I'm out of breatH...
12-02

Trigger-man

2004-10-23T10:15:00.000-04:00

As I slurp my soup, Hamlet admits
that he tAlked to the assasin
before he talked to Me;
then I hear the belLs begin to ring,
as they have tollEd for so many
distinguished sTate-funerals before.
Which one is the Murderer?
the highrAnking official
whose upholstered Carcass gently
trundles off in an expensive Hearse?
or perhaps 'tIs the smelly trigger-man
hiding in some abject laNe, along with
the rest of the populacE?

9/20/02

Ganymed

2004-10-22T22:04:00.000-04:00

Their dEnsity can oppress
the heart mUch more gravely than
the deepest layeR of snow-
and now they surrOund Ganymed,
enveloPed in mantles,
neArly as ancient
as the cratEred surface of the moon.
Of coUrse, their hearts,
like woRlds of ice,
are cOld and still-
and JuPiter has turned away,
his feAtures dark-

An astronomy book
4/16/2002