The Old Man in the Snow

The Old Man in the Snow was written by Getty in 2020 in memory of his wife. It calls back affectingly to earlier parts of the triptych, with the composer’s trademark eddies and clarion calls musing over a naturalistic soundscape, all coordinated empathetically by Luke. ‘What we who knew and saw may stay to teach,’ the chorale sang, ‘to strangers in the speech and song of men.’ Anthemic, the music raised goose bumps appropriate to the composer’s sentiment and to the approaching chill of Napa dusk.
Jeff Kaliss
San Francisco Classical Voice

As of December 2023, this is my most recent poem. It seems that I write verse much less easily than music. It comes fast when once it gets started, but somehow has to build up first from seeds inside. Here the seeds were the phrases “she is the child of beauty,” “she is the child of sorrow,” and “O beauty broken.” They had been with me for a couple of years, I think, in search of a context, when I finally sat down to write the poem on Christmas vacation in Hawaii.