A Journey After Loves
Poems by Bohdan Boychuk; Translated from Ukrainian by David Ignatow
1.
ripe years redden ahead
clustered questions
grow gray
over a footbridge
I cross toward autumn
and gather loves
remains
2.
flowers wither
into dusk
with their seasonal aches
my mouth sore from bitter fruit
October weather
cools at my heart
3.
my memories are like the spasms
of roads to nowhere
my memories are like faded trails
scars
4.
all roads led to you
but you led nowhere
taking me along
refusing yourself
all roads were you
but you were none
5.
I choked on your body
happiness soared through me
leaving an incurable need
to seek my cure in women
who drink me out in lust
6.
I gave myself away
becoming absent in myself
I gave myself to women
sending sons toward the future
now a single illusion remains
of life in my children
like a stale liquid
in my mouth
7.
my life is torn into strophes
of love and betrayal
my life is covered by signs
of deep delusions
with every penetration
of woman's body
[I contracted within myself
becoming distant] *
8.
now I stand in the wind
scoured through
at the graying edge of age
I gave myself away
along the road
Program Notes
A Journey After Loves is a setting of a remarkable poetic
pilgrimage by Bohdan Boychuk. It is also a somber, wintry
journey that casts a deep shadow on our need for, and ability
to, love. Or rather on, perhaps, our expectations of love.
There are a few song cycles that made a profound impression
on me, but none more than Leos Janacek's The Diary of One Who
Vanished. I heard it for the first time around 1959, and its
memory never left me. Each is a miniature, and if I may be
allowed a mixed metaphor, a pearl in a necklace of a
mesmerizing emotional journey. This cycle (A Journey After
Loves, my first) is written in Janacek's memory. Thus, to a
certain extent, my setting reflects the original Ukrainian
verses, in that I wanted the music to resonate a Slavic
soundscape in the English language. I also decided that all
eight songs would be one continuous whole, with the piano
often taking on the role of a guide, leading the singer from
one verse to the next. The cycle became a long monologue in
eight parts. There are a number of sound links that connect
each song: the bebung, a two-note phrase in which the first
note is done with a slight accent, the second sounding as its
immediate echo (Nos. 2 and 8); the triad (Nos. 5, 6 and 8);
variation on the same rhythmic pattern (Nos. 1 and 8);
modulatory schemes and many other cross-references. The style
of the music was influenced by the poems "courageous, severe,
lyrical style." In the words of Mark Rudman, they are poems
"of quick entrances and quick exits" some of them read like
folk poetry filtered through a modernist lens "[Boychuk's is]
a distinctive voice, which is as lyrical as it is bleak, as
haunted as it is isolated." A Journey After Loves was
commissioned by Dr. W. Howard Hoffman for Isabelle Emerson in
honor of her birthday. It was premiered on August 10, 2000
during the Las Vegas Music Festival 2000, by Paul Kreider,
baritone (for whom it was written) with the composer at the
piano. Virko Baley