Three Fables

2024 . for high voice and piano . 4 minutes .

Three Fables sets an original text to explore ideas about fate, about choice, and about whether one can discern the difference. In exploring three fables, each centered around water—the brook where Ophelia drowns, the river Styx of the Underworld, and the storm the speaker herself encounters at the end of the poem—mutability and inevitability become one and the same.

Text by Lucy Shirley

I don’t think Ophelia was depressed—
She was just a prisoner to whim.
When a writer and his pen
send you to a sorry end,
You bend and you learn to love the swim.
You bend till you learn to love the swim.
And I don’t think that Orpheus was a fool—
He decided love was not his goal.
He slowly turned his head
and sent his lover to the dead,
Instead, he wanted memories to hold.
Instead, he chose a memory to hold.
And I don’t think I’m actually a mess.
Each time that I feel down,
it makes my life seem that much more profound.
I’ll drown because I’m staring at the rain,
Turn ’round to keep a memory of pain.