Compositions

The Profane Piano Tuner

  • I finally let him go,

    the man who’d tune our innocent piano

    twice a year or so.

     

    He knew his stuff,

    and for a while, that was enough:

     

    I’d leave the room so he could hit

    B flat again and shout, You little shit,

    Come on, you bastard, pounding and pounding it.

     

    Hour after hour he’d swear

    You filthy whore, Oh don’t you dare,

     

    you stinking, stupid bitch-

    a litany of abuses which

    he couldn’t hear, though blessed with perfect pitch.

     

    One day I understood.

    Why pretend I’d tuned him out? What good

     

    could come from smiling through profanities

    like black, ill-tempered keys

    against the white— black rage in twos and threes?

     

    He said when he was done:

    A perfect day! Hey look, we’ve got some sun.

     

    I answered We’re in luck!

    and handed him his check and watched his truck

    back out the driveway, thinking You dumb fuck,

     

    not knowing I would think that. Very strange.

    My daughter, who’d been out of range

     

    all day at school,

    sailed in and sat down, lifted up her profile,

    and played a Chopin prelude like an angel.

    © Mary Jo Salter

Tenor Blake Friedman

Piano Nicholas Hrynyk

Lyrics Mary Jo Salter

Music Philip Salter

His Master’s Voice

  • Someone who wears

    the bud of my face

    looks down from your attic room

    at the moon rising

    from the throat of two branches.

    A batted ball cracks the summer open

    and the moon disappears

    in someone’s yard.

    From across the street,

    it must seem

    the moon is a sister

    at your window.

    I drop out of sight

    to watch you wind up

    your antique Victrola.

    Poised like a museum piece,

    you are a child who says nothing,

    but waits to sing.

    I want to peer down

    this battered gold horn

    and see what you hear.

    I want to love what you love,

    Caruso’s familiar crescendo,

    Addio, addio.

    When the moon sinks into the lake,

    grooves ripple out in silence.

    The record whirls and glimmers.

    This instant, the fisherman drops

    his needle again at the edge:

    listen to the static,

    the crackling of water.

    2.

    You tell me now you have found

    the dream of your adulthood:

    unable to sing, unable to breathe,

    you start awake with a scream

    in your ear, still ringing.

    When you sing my mouth

    opens wide in tears,

    like a woman rejoicing

    to see a child born.

    Addio, addio,

    the child is you:

    his face, for an instant,

    is bright as the moon

    that could melt a river,

    that could make applause lap

    across the water.

    © Mary Jo Salter

Tenor Blake Friedman

Violin I Pauline Kim-Harris

Cello Christine Kim

Piano Charity Wicks

Lyrics Mary Jo Salter

Music Philip Salter

Daddy

  • The light beneath my door

    never failed to widen,

    and expose your silhouette,

    like the moon that followed me home

    or those long Arabian Nights.

    You’ve stayed.

    As I read, I prayed.

    Your words- flowing musically-

    I hoped you would forget

    that it was barely dark, hardly late,

    and lie down next to me.

    You’ve stayed.

    As minutes changed,

    my tears fell slowly,

    scared that somehow you’d be gone by day-

    only to awaken in your arms.

    You’ve stayed.

    I carry your voice

    like a good luck charm,

    the only voice I will never forget.

    Someday, I will read to you;

    and I promise,

    I’ll stay.

Soprano Halley Gilbert

Violin I Pauline Kim-Harris

Violin II Conrad Harris

Viola Max Mandel

Cello Christine Kim

Piano Charity Wicks

Lyrics Laura Joy Salter

Music Philip Salter

From This Window

  • From this window I never see the sun rise-

    The light magically grows of itself.

    The birds speak only to each other.

    I wake to the shaking castanets of cicadas,

    The sound cresting and receding in tides.

    Rustling taffeta, the trees keep a

    Duenna’s guard, and hunch themselves

    Against the rain.

    I never see the moon: only a pallor

    Glowing on the branches.

    Sometimes, I see a star

    Which I cannot follow.

Tenor Blake Friedman

Violin I Pauline Kim-Harris

Cello Christine Kim

Piano Charity Wicks

Lyrics Lormina Salter

Music Philip Salter

On All Sides

  • On all sides, there are flies,

    and my gaze collides in the tiles of their eyes

    to blur and shake, dip and rise.

    To bigger minds, their whines

    play trills of violins.

    A note begins, to die a din.

    Cacophony- sweet hymns to kin-

    but growing ever louder

    to my solitary frame.

    What is this twisting game?

    A wingless shame that swats and maims,

    my instinct has me mangle.

    Forgive me, we are not the same;

    I cannot see from every angle.

Tenor Blake Friedman

Violin I Pauline Kim-Harris

Violin II Conrad Harris

Viola Max Mandel

Cello Christine Kim

Piano Charity Wicks

Lyrics Laura Joy Salter

Music Philip Salter

My Father’s Watch

  • My inheritance lies before me here, unbidden,

    and I am not so much surprised as numb -

    it is both the loss outright,

    and that it’s augury of what’s to come.

    My instinct is to leave it where it lies,

    it can carry on without me – self-sufficient –

    yet there’s another message etched within it,

    not just my name it scribes with every tick,

    but that there’s neither rescue, nor respite, nor nick

    of time to save us, only what we can gather

    in both arms’ endless flailing sweep

    before we lose our hold and fall to sleep.

    So- how shall I take up my duties

    as sentry, generous provider, great heart and faithless tool,

    conscientious amnesiac, brave loner and beloved fool?

    How can this manacle aid my grasping extremity?

    I look at his watch and know likewise I have been

    a two-fisted drinker of my father’s once full cup.

    I pause. It doesn’t. Then I take it up.

Tenor Blake Friedman

Violin I Pauline Kim-Harris

Piano Charity Wicks

Lyrics William Salter

Music Philip Salter

Mary Cazzato I

  • She’s lovely—though the photograph

    I’ve kept of her is not

    of anyone I knew. Eighteen

    back then, in nineteen twenty-one,

    and in her rickrack headband, half-

    flapper, maybe. But

    at her ear, a Victorian rose

    speaks more of what she was,

    or would become to me—as yet,

    my grandfather remains unmet.

    (She’d had no thought of us at all;

    and yet would make us feel

    we were the reason she was here—

    as if, engendered, love’s

    the engenderer.) She was born, for me,

    sometime around nineteen sixty,

    already wearing lace-trimmed gloves;

    a lady playing poker.

    Strange how it all starts to condense—

    the only song I can

    recall her playing on that spinet

    “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean”;

    those childhood dances on her carpet

    resolve into one dance.

    © Mary Jo Salter

Soprano Halley Gilbert

Piano Charity Wicks

Lyrics Mary Jo Salter

Music Philip Salter

Mary Cazzato II

  • Pregnant with our deaths (a germ

    within the mind suspects),

    we carry their date and kind with us

    like the embryo’s blind sex,

    regardless of our ignorance,

    for a life’s full term.

    Yet who’s to say the future’s not

    a table laid in haste

    for every unexpected guest?

    Still blooming, the bouquet that winds

    and spills over her tiny hands

    seems then to tumble out

    of the frame wherein, expressionless,

    she evenly can face

    everything she’s yet to lose:

    the suicide of the brother whose

    wedding this is, and even the freak

    event that turned a shock

    of her hair, at thirty-two, all white:

    the skidding truck that killed

    one whose very name was blessed,

    Angela Paradise, her child.

    She lost two in her grief: Grandmother

    had been carrying another.

    © Mary Jo Salter

Soprano Halley Gilbert

Piano Charity Wicks

Lyrics Mary Jo Salter

Music Philip Salter

Mary Cazzato III

  • I was barely older, when she died,

    than the girl whose portrait clicks

    shut like a coffin in my palm.

    Black velvet’s on the other side.

    —Years later, a recurrent dream:

    she winks at me and looks

    as though there’s something to disclose,

    but first, we climb long stairs,

    the two of us, to a sunny room I’d

    swear I knew—those olive chairs;

    dropped in a crystal vase, a rose.

    I’d forgotten that she’s dead—

    she doesn’t say so… but one knows.

    And vacantly her eyes

    hold nothing of my own surprise.

    Shrugging (“What did you suppose?”),

    she’s gone—and leaves behind a locket

    enfolding one last secret

    between two views the living can’t

    connect: the thoughtless stare

    of the girl, and the perpetual black

    unblinkingly regarding her.

    There’s never time to call her back—

    to ask her what she meant.

    © Mary Jo Salter

Soprano Halley Gilbert

Violin I Pauline Kim-Harris

Violin II Christina Courtin

Viola Beth Meyers

Cello Summer Boggess

Piano Charity Wicks

Lyrics Mary Jo Salter

Music Philip Salter

At an Island Farm

  • If only the light might last,

    the mild sea-breeze hold steady,

    I think perhaps I could soon be ready

    to relinquish a past

    that let go of me as surely

    as some stern wind last year

    may have seized a wheat stem by the ear-

    and shaken it, purely,

    without a thought for

    whether the seeds were drowned

    or whether, aloft, some of them found

    another shore.

Tenor Blake Friedman

Meridian String Quartet

Lyrics Brad Leithauser

Music Philip Salter

A Mosquito

  • The lady whines,

    then dines-

    is slapped and killed;

    yet, it's her killer's blood

    that has been spilled.

Tenor Blake Friedman

Piano Charity Wicks

Lyrics Brad Leithauser

Music Philip Salter

Luminary

  • Just how did she come to be there—

    shining hugely, inches above the street,

    like the answer risen from a question?

    In a moment’s movement, between

    long rows of houses with an air

    of subjects at attention,

    she settled all her weight

    on a great, invisible throne.

    For hours the traffic, like the one-

    way tide of her desire,

    was drawn into that signal stare.

    Yet as she rose she dwindled; what

    had seemed the dazzling crown

    of a sun-descended sovereign

    contracted to a pillbox hat

    morning would pull down.

    Retiring rather late that night,

    although still a queen, she fit

    into the grid of one windowpane

    the size of a chessboard square.

    And with room to spare—

    enough to allow a pawn

    among the advancing stars to share

    the spot she rested on.

    © Mary Jo Salter

Tenor Blake Friedman

Violin I Pauline Kim-Harris

Violin II Conrad Harris

Viola Beth Meyers

Cello Christine Kim

Piano Charity Wicks

Lyrics Mary Jo Salter

Music Philip Salter

Inch by Inch

  • Small hollows in streets

    brim full and flatten;

    an open-mouthed mailbox

    begins to fatten.

    Inside-out, showing seams

    or skeletons

    (the lines of a dress

    or long white bones),

    what’s upright remains

    touched barely, but rimmed

    like a plan of itself:

    a house snow-trimmed.

    Though you read the arches

    on the tops of cars,

    or window-sills against

    perpendiculars

    as the blizzard’s index,

    watch how, inch by inch,

    each profile distorts

    as the blowing lifts:

    evergreens extend

    white-gloved bear paws,

    a bare bush grows

    buds of pussywillows,

    and the wind in drifts

    leaves a mound of powder,

    a heap like a cat

    at the foot of your door.

    © Mary Jo Salter

Tenor Blake Friedman

Violin I Pauline Kim-Harris

Cello Christine Kim

Piano Charity Wicks

Lyrics Mary Jo Salter

Music Philip Salter

Ah, Your Gracious Lady

  • Simone:

    No kinsman and no cousin? You amaze me.

    Who is it then who with such courtly grace, deigns to accept our hospitalities?

    Guido:

    My name is Guido Bardi.

    Simone:

    What? The son of that great Lord of Florence?

    Guido:

    The very same.

    Simone:

    Whose dim towers like shadows, silvered by the wandering moon, I see from out my casement every night?

    Guido:

    The very same.

    Simone:

    Sir Guido Bardi, you are welcome here. Twice welcome.

    I trust my honest wife, most honest, if uncomely to the eye, hath not with foolish chatterings wearied you- as is the wont of women.

    Guido:

    Ah! Your gracious lady,

    whose beauty is a lamp that pales the stars,

    has robbed Diana’s quiver of its beams,

    has welcomed me with such sweet courtesy

    that if it be her pleasure (and your own),

    I will come often to your simple house. (bells chime)

    And when your business bids you walk abroad,

    I will sit here and charm her loneliness,

    lest she might sorrow for you over much.

    What say you, good Simone?

    Simone:

    My noble Lord, you bring me such high honor.

    That my tongue like a slave’s tongue is tied,

    and cannot say the word it would.

    Guido:

    Nay, would I gladly do this!

    Bianca:

    Stay, Sir Guido!

    Guido:

    To please your gracious wife, I will tarry

    ‘till the horned moon climbs past the branches of the cypress trees!

Tenor Blake Friedman

Baritone Michael Weyandt

Soprano Halley Gilbert

Violin I Pauline Kim-Harris

Violin II Conrad Harris

Viola Beth Meyers

Cello Christine Kim

Piano Charity Wicks

Lyrics Oscar Wilde and Frank Crocitto

Music Philip Salter

I Would Not Have You Think of This

  • Guido:

    I would not have you think of this. While I am here, I wish to see no water brim those

    eyes- no frowns cloud that face. Think only of me, and of how much, and long, my soul doth speak to yours.

    Bianca:

    I think of you, and there I have my pain. When his arms clutch at me in the dark nights,

    and his dry lips press on mine, I think of you, and how it is- your arms and your lips that I would have

    on me.

    Guido:

    You have them now.

    Bianca:

    How I curse the day ever you passed here and chose this house of mine in which to rest.

    I curse the day!

    Guido:

    Never will you say that more!

    Bianca:

    I curse the day!

    Guido and Bianca variously…

    Guido:

    Your lips are more sweet than the nectar of flowers that hang on summer vines and fill

    the hillsides with their sweetness.

    Were I son to seven kings, and those kings rulers of the seas and continents, never

    would I be worthy of my Bianca fair.

    You think that I am one to fear Simone?

    So you think that a prince- the heir and the ruler of

    Florence- quakes before an aged wool dealer? Let me have your lips!

    Never will I leave you, love. I will never abandon you. I will think- I will think. There is such sadness in

    those precious eyes. I will drive them into joy- into joy!

    Bianca:

    You are too fine a lord for me my Guido, my Guido. You must return to your castle, and

    your father’s house- and never see me more. It is best that you should never meet- It is best that you should never

    come again. I love you more than life, my Guido! Kiss me, then!

    There is no way. Go now! Will you drive them into joy- into joy?!

Tenor Blake Friedman

Soprano Halley Gilbert

Violin I Pauline Kim-Harris

Violin II Conrad Harris

Viola Beth Meyers

Cello Christine Kim

Piano Charity Wicks

Lyrics Oscar Wilde and Frank Crocitto

Music Philip Salter

Love’s Silence

  • An old love of mine

    rationed her heart. What could she do?

    An ardent thrift

    would guard her gift,

    and cost her offers of love renewed.

    A portrait she’d paint,

    then trade her art. So, who would buy?

    And who will sell

    if she still dwells

    inside that canvas? She’d rather die.

    Unlike my old love, my gifts are whole—

    not measured, and not bound to myself.

    But my love is silent, and though it is full—

    untethered, eternal—it’s like sound to the deaf.

Tenor Blake Friedman

Violin I Francesca Dardani

Violin II Maria Im

Viola Mario Gotoh

Cello Jessica Wang

Piano Nicholas Hrynyk

Lyrics Philip Salter

Music Philip Salter

Ah! Sunflower

  • Ah Sun-flower! weary of time,

    Who countest the steps of the Sun:

    Seeking after that sweet golden clime

    Where the traveler's journey is done.

    Where the Youth pined away with desire,

    And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow:

    Arise from their graves and aspire,

    Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.

Tenor Blake Friedman

Violin I Francesca Dardani

Violin II Ludovica Burtone

Viola Mario Gotoh

Cello Marta Bagratuni

Lyrics William Blake

Music Philip Salter

Born to the Sea

  • And each time

    Every time

    Storms threaten

    Gales of heartache

    Tempests of hunger and thirst

    Squalls of persecution

    With chains and whips and

    Dungeons; cold and loneliness.

    Every time

    Every single time

    He has come

    Walking over the

    Very things that threatened to

    Undo us, destroy us

    Smiling, reassuring, calming

    The seas.

Tenor Blake Friedman

Violin I Francesca Dardani

Violin II Ludovica Burtone

Viola Celia Hatton

Cello Marta Bagratuni

Lyrics Dr. Lawrence Taylor

Music Philip Salter

Pair of Bells

  • Joanna and Valerio

    went up to the campanile

    of the stone-deaf castle.

    From across the courtyard, one

    dented little bell with a skew

    clapper could be seen.

    I hadn’t noticed the bell-pulls.

    But when Joanna yanked on hers,

    and Valerio took his turn,

    I heard a pair of louder bells,

    deeper, surely bigger—though

    these and both my friends remained

    entirely invisible.

    And the little bell, off-key and out of sync,

    hung on and swung—

    a third wheel like myself, moved

    to celebrate a pair of bells.

    Things happen but are parables.

    © Mary Jo Salter

Tenor Blake Friedman

Violin I Francesca Dardani

Violin II Lavinia Pavlish

Viola Elise Frawley

Cello Reenat Pinchas

Piano Nicholas Hrynyk

Lyrics Mary Jo Salter

Music Philip Salter

The Damask

  • That color- that color!

    Does it offend you? Is it too much like blood?

    Nay, pardon- I have here a Lucca Damask, the very web of silver.

    And the roses, so cunningly wrought that they lack perfume

    merely to cheat the wonton sense.

    Touch it, My Lord. Is it not soft as water- strong as steel?

    And the roses- are they not finely woven?

    I think the hillsides that best love the rose

    At Bellosguardo or at Fiesole,

    throw no such blossoms on the lap of spring-

    or if they do, their blossoms droop and die.

    Such is the fate of all of the dainty things

    that dance in wind and water.

    Nature Herself makes war on her own loveliness,

    and slays her children, like Medea.

    Nay, but My Lord, look closer still.

    Why! In this damask here it is summer always,

    and no winter’s tooth will ever blight these blossoms.

Tenor Blake Friedman

Violin I Pauline Kim-Harris

Violin II Conrad Harris

Viola Beth Meyers

Cello Christine Kim

Piano Charity Wicks

Lyrics Oscar Wilde and Frank Crocitto

Music Philip Salter

For Helene

  • You came so quietly,

    I almost didn’t see

    the gentle joys you gave

    to me. And still I save

    myself, and can not break

    the silence that we take

    for words. So let me sing.

    I’ll shake the air to bring

    the failed words to the sky.

    Can you find your voice? Then by

    a song, unveil the time

    when I rejoiced: you are mine.

Tenor Philip Salter

Meridian String Quartet

Lyrics Philip Salter

Music Philip Salter