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"from seed to bud"
David Huang Mailman (2021-2022)
Text by Caroline Couch (2021)

Recorded and premiered 28 November 2023 at Vanderbilt University Blair School's "Living Sounds" concert. Featuring Syd Braustein, soprano and pianist Emma Chang. Full score accesible here.

from seed to bud

i find that
time passes
faster than
  photons firing
   synapses firing
    a blood bent heartbeat rushing to my head
so
quick love,

hold me in your arms
  hold you in my mind

and together cultivate
from seed to bud
  from branch to flower blooming
    a soon fruit love

such fickle foolish futile fruit -- are we not born to rot?

  you see it in the way bark withers
  bones fail
  each passing year, a ring upon the last
  until the spoiled yield litters
  the sepulcher earth

for
why love,

do we let our gardens grow in
unfettered optimism
  sustained with
   unbound warmth and
endless sunshine

not optimism but --

life
life love.

a
light love,
  like the clementine rots
  and orange blossom wilts

a blessing of memory.

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"public transmigration: sketches for uriel"
Caroline Couch (2023/24)

Text for an upcoming collaboration with David H. Mailman. For voice and Pierrot Ensemble

public transmigration

a paper crane sits alone on the M55,
miniature upon the seat.
folded out of a receipt, he carries the memory
of his father who made him and set him on his journey.

and I wonder if he got there.

people sleep on the uptown E,
faceless figures laying flat upon the benches.
I watch a stranger pat another stranger’s resting head,
like a mother wishes her daughter goodnight,

and I hope she is dreaming sweetly.

my lover skates on west third and bleecker,
dancing across the concrete he stops to hold me.
a sailor kissing his lover farewell,
before charting an asphalt sea,

and I muse if he remembers us.

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"seventeen"
Caroline Couch (2019)

An early poem of mine that found some level of success. Writeen in 17-1 style, has yet to be set to music. American Voices Poetry Award Nominee and Scholastic Gold Key Award Winning. Charmingly juvenile.

seventeen

on the day that i was born, seventeen years ago, one door opened while another one closed.
no second born son, but a daughter born true. new to the family, new to you.
jubilant and joyous for a newborn heart, yet time would make yours fail to start
scheduled appointment to fix that organ, so you could watch mine begin to beat.
under anesthesia, you closed your eyes. breathing real air for the last time.
a heavy iron lung, due to a deadly mistake circled in red.
catholic last rites to help you pass, peace was finally found
(now seventeen years later I write with your pen.
an early present from a long past man,
helps gracefully ink my pages and thoughts)
baby in black at your funeral
crying with a valentine's rose.
from ashes to ashes,
i am here
you are
not.

---

"Selections from a 2023 retranslation of Stravinsky's 'Soldier's Tale'"
rough translation from French by Ethan Osman
set to poetry by Caroline Couch

A collaborative wrting effort between Ethan Osman of Village Verein and myself to create a modern adaption and translation of Igor Stravinsky's 1918 work "The Soldier's Tale." Being fluent in French, Ethan would provide me a literal translation of the original 1918 French text. Taking this literal translation, I would flesh it out poetically and set it to the rhyming couplets required of the piece. The final text was jointly edited by the two of us.