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Two Levertov Songs
1982

voice
piano

SCORE
Song for Ishtar
The Sage

In 1982 I collected 32 songs, including these, to be performed individually or in sets as
Songbook 1. Most of the very earliest of these were virtually unperformable as originally
notated: unrealisticallly fast, vast vocal leaps, obsessive use of articulations and dynamic
swivels. As they appear here the most egregious naivities have been cleaned up, but I've
tried to maintain the spirit as intended. It was kind of sweet to see what the 25-year-old
me was doing to desperately try to appear 'modern' on the page, when my music has always
been, at heart, deeply triadic.

TEXTS
Song for Ishtar
The moon is a sow
and grunts in my throat
Her great shining shines through me
so the mud of my hollow gleams
and breaks in silver bubbles 

She is a sow
and I a pig and a poet 

When she opens her white
lips to devour me I bite back
and laughter rocks the moon 

In the black of desire
we rock and grunt, grunt and
shine 


The Sage
The cat is eating the roses:
that’s the way he is.
Don’t stop him, don’t stop
the world going round,
that’s the way things are.
The third of May
was misty; fourth of May
who knows. Sweep
the rosemeat up, throw the bits
out in the rain.
He never eats
every crumb, says
the hearts are bitter.
That’s the way he is, he knows
the world and the weather.
 
Denise Levertov (1923–1997)