Pablo Neruda In Love (2005) by Jeffrey Bernstein

Pablo Neruda In Love was awarded Honorable Mention in the 2015 American Prize in Choral Composition.

Composed in 2005 by Jeffrey Bernstein in response to a commission from the late Roger Claiborne, former music instructor at The Hotchkiss School. The work is dedicated to Roger Claiborne and Matt Torrey. Matt died before the work was completed; Roger died in the fall of 2009. Text assembled by the composer from "Twenty-Nine Love Poems and a Song of Despair" by Pablo Neruda. Recorded April 2007 by the Occidental Glee Club, Alan Steinberger, piano. Copyright © 2005 Corduroy Fifths Music Publishing.

PABLO NERUDA IN LOVE
Leaning into the afternoons I cast my sad nets
towards your oceanic eyes.
You keep only darkness. We are boys once more, and
from your regard sometimes the coast of dread emerges like a knife.
We have lost even this twilight.

No one saw us this evening hand in hand
while the blue night dropped on the world.
In a frenzy I will free my flock of arrows.
My words rain over you, stroking you.
There in the highest blaze my solitude lengthens and flames.
Soundless, delirious.
I have gone marking the atlas of your body with crosses of fire.
My mouth went across: a spider, trying to hide.
In you, behind you, timid, driven by thirst.
Soundless, delirious joy.

The water runs barefoot in the wet streets.
My sad tenderness, what comes over you all at once?
When I have reached the most awesome and the coldest summit
my heart closes like a nocturnal flower.

Every day you play with the light of the universe.
You are mine, and in your life my infinite dreams live.
In my sky at twilight you are like a cloud.

You are taken in the net of my music, my love,
and my nets of music are wide as the sky.
My soul is born on the shore of your eyes of mourning.
Where the land of dreams begins.
My nets of music are wide as the sky, and
The clouds travel like white handkerchiefs of goodbye.