Walking the Farm
WALKING THE FARM
The Crossing
Donald Nally, conductor
hosted by Art at Kings Oaks
Saturday and Sunday, September 17 & 18, 2022 @ 4pm
Kings Oaks Farm, Newtown, Pennsylvania
PROGRAM
We gather in the garden
ricotta (Fulper Family Farm{tead, Lambertville, NJ)
basil (Blooming Glen Farm, Perka{ie, PA)
1. Under the copper beach tree
In beauty may I walk Jonathan Dove (Navajo Prayer)
2. Barn
A Cluster of Instincts George Lewis (Mei-mei Berssenbrugge)
world premiere
tomatoes (Milk House Farm, Newtown, PA)
cucumbers, cilantro, peppers (Blooming Glen Farm)
jalapeños (Heidi’s garden, Philadelphia, PA)
3. Creek
Breathturn Kirsten Broberg (Paul Celan)
cucumbers (Blooming Glen Farm)
goat cheese (Sugar Maple, Stockton, NJ)
4. Field *
Encounter, from Three Poems Pēteris Vasks (Czesław Miłosz)
honey (Paul{ backyard, Madison, NJ)
* the site of Ted Hearne’s FARMING (June 2023)
5. Chapel
Shadow, from A Native Hill Gavin Bryars (Wendell Berry)
eggplants, garlic (Blooming Glen Farms)
6. On the high drive of the Barn
It is time David Shapiro (Paul Celan)
We reconvene in the garden
apples & cider (Solebury Orchard, New Hope, PA)
eggs (Milk House Farm)
NOTES + TEXTS
In beauty may I walk
music by Jonathan Dove
words from a Navajo Prayer (trans. Jerome K. Rothenberg
In beauty may I walk
All day long may I walk
Through the returning seasons may I walk
Beautifully will I possess again
Beautifully joyful birds
On the trail marked with pollen may I walk
With grasshoppers about my feet may I walk
With dew about my feet may I walk
With beauty before me
With beauty behind me
With beauty above me
With beauty all around me
It is finished in beauty
A Cluster of Instincts
music by George Lewis
words by Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge
Commissioned by The Crossing and Donald Nally.
There is a great wall in the fog and rain.
There are some mountains in the mist.
There is the line of a wall in the mist. I go in and out of the fog on the rim trail, and the mountains rise in fog among yellow leaves.
There is a veil of fog between her and a sunlit flank of yellow leaves.
Slow-whirling galaxies allow stars and gas to fall into hot disks of matter, orbiting around massive holes in the centers of the galaxies, allowing a branch to spring up at the moment when snow melts from it.
Your concentration is interrupted by a shadow on the periphery of your memory of her.
Your concentration is a large array, where debris in the mind appears in an intense shower of heat radiation, like a cluster of instincts to the body.
– “Fog” (2009) by Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge
Breathturn
music by Kirsten Broberg
words by Paul Celan (translated by Pierre Joris)
i. INTO THE FURROWS
ii. (I KNOW YOU
iii. YOU WERE
iv. PATHS IN THE SHADOW-BREAK
v. THREADSUNS
INTO THE FURROWS
of heavenacid in the doorcrack
you press the word
from which I rolled,
when I with trembling fists
the roof over us
dismantled, slate for state,
syllable for syllable, for the copper-
glimmer of the begging-
cup's sake up
there.
(I KNOW YOU, you are the deeply bowed,
I, the transpierced, am subject to you.
Where flames a word, would testify for us both?
You-all, all real. I-all delusion.)
YOU WERE my death:
you I could hold,
when all fell from me.
PATHS IN THE SHADOW-BREAK
of your hand.
From the four-finger-furrow
I root up the
petrified blessing.
THREADSUNS
above the grayblack wastes.
A tree-
high thought
grasps the light-tone: there are
still songs to sing beyond
mankind.
Encounter, from Three Poems
music by Pēteris Vasks
words by Czesław Miłosz
We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn.
A red wing rose in the darkness.
And suddenly a hare ran across the road.
One of us pointed to it with his hand.
That was long ago. Today neither of them is alive,
Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture.
O my love, where are they, where are they going
The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles.
I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder.
Shadow, from A Native Hill
music by Gavin Bryars
words by Wendell Berry
Every man is followed by a shadow which is his death - dark, featureless, and mute. And for every man there is a place where his shadow is clarified and is made his reflection, where his face is mirrored in the ground. He sees his source and his destiny, and they are acceptable to him. He becomes the follower of what pursued him. What hounded his track becomes his companion.
That is the myth of my search and my return.
–from the essay A Native Hill (1968)
© 2002 by Wendell Berry, from The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays. Reprinted by permission of Counterpoint Press.
It is time
music by David Shapiro
words by Paul Celan (trans. Michael Hamburger)
Autumn eats its leaf out of my hand: we are friends.
From the nuts we shell time and we teach it to walk:
then time returns to the shell.
In the mirror it’s Sunday,
in dream there is room for sleeping,
our mouths speak the truth.
My eye moves down to the sex of my loved one:
we look at each other,
we exchange dark words,
we love each other like poppy and recollection,
we sleep like wine in the conches,
like the sea in the moon’s blood ray.
We stand by the window embracing, and people look up from the street:
it is time they knew!
It is time the stone made an effort to flower,
time unrest had a beating heart.
It is time it were time.
It is time.
– "Corona" by Paul Celan
SUPPORTERS
We are grateful to those who make The Crossing possible.
Click here to make a gift that supports The Crossing.
TEAM + ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
With special thanks to Alex Cohen and Clara Weishahn,
hosts and curators of Art at Kings Oaks,
and Kings Oaks Farm proprietors
Dana and Neil Cohen
Art at Kings Oaks current exhibition runs
September 23-October 9: kingsoaksart.com
Walking the Farm map by Alex Cohen
Catering by Heidi Kurtz
We thank our Saturday Beverage Sponsor:
Cartesian Brewing (Philadelphia, PA)
We thank our Sunday Beverage Sponsors:
Mad Princes Brewing (Doylestown, PA)
Manoff Market Cidery (New Hope, PA)
The land of Kings Oaks Farm is part of the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape, called "Lenapehoking", dating back thousands of years. During the colonial era and early federal period, many were removed West and North, but some also remain among the continuing historical tribal communities of the region:
The Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Tribal Nation;
the Ramapough Lenape Nation;
and the Powhatan Renape Nation,
The Nanticoke of Mill{boro Delaware,
and the Lenape of Che{wold Delaware.
The Crossing
Katy Avery
Nathaniel Barnett
Jessica Beebe
Karen Blanchard
Steven Bradshaw
Matt Cramer
Ryan Fleming
Joanna Gates
Dimitri German
Dominic German
Michaël Hudetz
Steven Hyder
AJ Keller
Lauren Kelly
Anika Kildegaard
Heidi Kurtz
Christopher LaMountain
Maren Montalbano
Rebecca Myers
Daniel Schwartz
Rebecca Siler
Tiana Sorenson
Daniel Spratlan
Elisa Sutherland
Donald Nally, conductor
Kevin Vondrak, assistant conductor
John Walthausen, guest keyboards
Jonathan Bradley, executive director
Shannon McMahon, operations manager
Kate Nelson, stage manager
Elizabeth Dugan, bookkeeper
We thank our volunteers: Brittany Saunders, Victoria Baccini, Emily Barth, Ben Perri, Katerina Pak, Rina Cicco, Rebecca Kanach, Maria Michurina, Karen Hopkins Harrod, and Stacy Caldwell
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