When We Meet Again

FOR MEDIUM OR HIGH VOICE AND PIANO

Text by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Dedicated to Judith Bettina

Premiere: February 24, 1987; Merkin Concert Hall, New York; Group for Contemporary Music; Judith Bettina, soprano; Tobias Picker, piano

Duration: 5’

When We Meet Again

Edna St. Vincent Millay “I, being born a woman and distressed”

I, being born a woman and distressed

By all the needs and notions of my kind,

Am urged by your propinquity to find

Your person fair, and feel a certain zest

To bear your body’s weight upon my breast:

So subtly is the fume of life designed,

To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,

And leave me once again undone, possessed.

Think not for this, however, the poor treason

Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,

I shall remember you with love, or season

My scorn with pity,—let me make it plain:

I find this frenzy insufficient reason

For conversation when we meet again.