…Really the last (almost certainly), last (quite probably), last (just possibly) song. At a certain point, life invites you to lay aside your vanity, your ambition, and their attendant stylistic anxiety, and to exist in the uncomplicated present, playing in the world like a little child, but with the skills acquired with experience. That’s what this poem indicates to me, and this is how the music came out!

Homage to Life

A fine thing, to have lived
In a house of flesh,
And given time a home
In a steadfast heart,
To have looked on as one’s hands
Take hold of the world
Cupping it like an apple
In a little garden,

A fine thing, to have loved
The earth, the moon and sun
As familiar friends
Whose like you have not known,
And to have entrusted
The world to memory
Like a bright cavalier
Riding his black steed,

To have given a human face
To these words: children, wife,
And to have served as shore
To wandering continents,
To have come upon the soul
With small strokes of the oars
Lest it be scared away
By an approach too brusque.

And to have all these words
Bustling in one’s head,
To choose the least beautiful
To let them live a little,
To have felt this life
So hurried, so ill loved,
And to have secured it
In this poetry.

Jules Supervielle