Child of Impossibles (2017)

for SSAA chorus a cappella
For Martin Benvenuto and the Peninsula Women's Chorus
Poem by Safiya Sinclair 
6 minutes

Safiya Sinclair, poet

Commissioned by The Peninsula Women's Chorus as part of its Trailblazers Project, through the Patricia Hennings New Music Fund
Martin Benvenuto, Artistic Director

WORLD PREMIERE
March 10, 2018
Peninsula Women's Chorus,
Martin Benvenuto, conductor
Trianon Theatre, San Jose, CA

Child of Impossibles
by Safiya Sinclair

For Harriet
Caught in a dark sleep I shelter the weight
of this long night inside me, great unfurling
knife of heaven on my back. How the hurt circles
like a famished bird. Don't look back, she tells me.
Don't look back. Child of impossibles, you are here,
dazzling. Still blooming wonder from the wound.
Don't you hear them? All my mothers in the chokecherry tree - she a Green June beetle, she the last fruit gifted
to the weary. Feet in the fire, I am chasing what I cannot see; future of our own lost dreaming, her thousand warm hands washed in gold, home renaming me.
And she always beckoning
Welcome
Welcome
Welcome.