Throwback Bonus

It’s a long weekend so here’s a bonus throwback! This is the furthest back we’ve gone.

As a kid I learned to write pop songs by setting classic poetry to music. I think I was barely fifteen when I put this one together.

Plus, as followers of this blog already know, I have a thing for still life/vanitas, and this poem is basically a word-painting of a still life.

Here’s the original poem:

Music I Heard - Conrad Aiken 

Music I heard with you was more than music, 
And bread I broke with you was more than bread; 
Now that I am without you, all is desolate; 
All that was once so beautiful is dead. 

Your hands once touched this table and this silver, 
And I have seen your fingers hold this glass.
These things do not remember you, beloved, 
And yet your touch upon them will not pass. 
For it was in my heart that you moved among them, 
And blessed them with your hands and with your eyes; 
And in my heart they will remember always, 
—They knew you once, O beautiful and wise.