This thirst in the lungs sets three poems by Robin Myers. Each poem dwells on the beauty of a single moment.

 

This thirst in the lungs is recorded on Snow White Turns Sixty, an album of art-songs featuring soprano Gillian Hollis accompanied by Dale Trumbore.

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Preview or purchase this score for performance through Graphite Marketplace. 

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1. THIS MORNING
 
This morning, still, winter
waking, kicking off the quilt.
Till now, unthinking
waiting, cupping in the quiet
I will stretch from—the plant
uncurling toward the glass,
the light gone strong enough
to break it, vines reaching to it
not from wanting, just not knowing
how not to. Dust shifting
in the sun of the air, floor
waiting for the bright
that stains it. What
is it, this thirst in the lungs,
a breath pulled tight
as the shade snapped up to let it
in, this waking, this dense nothing
of warmth across the rug,
this sweet mourning.

 

2. EVENING

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I walk home at sundown. The light strikes
the telephone wires full on,
and the cables blaze as if from inside.
 
For an instant, I’m sure it’s true—
that November has fired up the veins
of everything—

that I, too, am briefly bright
this way, and falsely transparent;
a vessel for some joy I haven’t learned

to make myself, or bear,
or give. 

 

3. UNION SQUARE STATION

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After all the fervor—all the search
for words, the reach for flesh,
the warmth of both, or just
a way to cope with what they do—
and after all the space that's left
when sought, whether found
or not, I think, standing in the empty
subway stop, while a lone cellist bows
his low harmonics into the cave,
that this, too, must be desire:
reaching out not to the player,
nor with any fire, but to the train: Be slow
and far away. Let me stay
with this raw sound humming
in my lungs. Make me wait.
Never come.

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—Robin Myers