Slow Learning

Program Notes

One can only be so serious setting a text about paper training, and there is certainly a disconnect between the earthy text and the gravitas of some of the solo vocal lines in my piece. But Scott Cairns’ poem is ultimately about mercy. Concluding my work with an outsize and formally Bachian fugue is, on the one hand, of course patently ridiculous. And yet, viewed as a kind of “Miserere mei” (“Have mercy”) re-directed to the third person (“Forgive him”), it is perhaps less absurd and even a little bit spiritual.

on slow learning
Scott Cairns

If you have ever owned
a tortoise, you already know
how difficult paper training can be
for some pets.

Even if you get so far
as to instill in your tortoise
the the value of achieving the paper
there remains one obstacle—
your tortoise’s intrinsic sloth.

Even a well-intentioned tortoise
may find himself, in his journeys
to be painfully far from the mark.

Failing, your tortoise may shy away
for weeks within his shell,
utterly ashamed, or looking up with tiny,
wet eyes might offer an honest shrug.
Forgive him.