npm pmmu #12: true friendship

This month I'm posting daily Poetry-Music Match-Ups, and you're invited to join me! (See the bottom* of the post for ideas.)  When I don't have a crowd-sourced combo scheduled, I'll share one of my own many PMMUs!  If something comes to your mind, send it to me HERE.

Brenda Harsham of Friendly Fairy Tales provides today's Match-Up, which follows on from Sunday's consideration of friendship suggested by my dad.

Brenda wrote a haibun about friendship. A haibun is a Japanese form of prose followed by poetry--in this case one of many quotes about earthly friendship that caught her eye.

A friend is one to whom one may pour out all the contents of one’s heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that the gentlest of hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping, and with the breath of kindness blow the rest away. — Unknown

Brenda "pulled the haiku out of it, reworked them, tinkered a bit and voila"--and she sent a photo to go with it too!

True Friendship in Four Haiku || Brenda Harsham

 

alone in a crowd

everyone else seems happy

what is wrong with me

hike, chat, share

listen with support and love

friendship unfurls

I look for your face

the angle of your eyebrows

I smile inside and out

when I’m weary

you lay your cheek along mine

your warmth is my sun

She pairs these words with another classic that reaches out of my father's generation and into ours:

 Simon and Garfunkel "Bridge over Troubled Water" 1970

Listening to this again, I was surprised--I think of it as a quiet acoustic performance, but it swells and soars towards the end, giving me a very different feel than Brenda's more restrained haiku.  I especially like the third one. (Interestingly, Paul Simon's composition drew deliberately from gospel music and that same "friend indeed.")

Thanks to Brenda, and stay tuned for more on friendship and kindness later this week.

*Ways to match-up poetry and music--take your pick:

·      your own poem with music that you've realized goes with it,

·      your own music with a poem that goes with it,

·      someone else's poem with someone else's music to match, 

·      song lyrics that you find particularly poetic,

·      poems written AS song lyrics

·      poems inspired by songs,

·      songs written about poems, 

·      poems written about songs, 

·      favorite nursery rhymes (which often have tunes),

·      and any other poetry-music combinations that make sense to you.

npm pmmu #10: love unknown

My dad joins us today--rather late, I'm afraid--to share his "all-time favorite poem set to music."  A musician himself (saxophone originally, and clarinet; these days oboe and recorder more often, and he sings darn well too), Bob Mordhorst enjoys many kinds of music and has come to appreciate a much wider range of poetry in the last decade (I'll claim a little responsibility for that!).

But he is foremost a man of God, a Lutheran pastor who says, "I can’t sing [this] without getting choked up at the words 'he is my friend, my friend indeed.' There are other musical settings to it, but in my opinion this is the perfect wedding of poem and music."

Here is the full text of this hymn with words composed in 1664 and the tune my dad loves composed later, in the 20th century.  You can read more about other musical connections at its very own Wikipedia entry.

My Song Is Love Unknown || Samuel Crossman

My song is love unknown,
My Saviour’s love to me;
Love to the loveless shown,
That they might lovely be.
O who am I,
That for my sake
My Lord should take
Frail flesh and die?

He came from His blest throne
Salvation to bestow;
But men made strange, and none
The longed-for Christ would know:
But O! my Friend,
My Friend indeed,
Who at my need
His life did spend.

Sometimes they strew His way,
And His sweet praises sing;
Resounding all the day
Hosannas to their King:
Then “Crucify!”
is all their breath,
And for His death
they thirst and cry.

Why, what hath my Lord done?
What makes this rage and spite?
He made the lame to run,
He gave the blind their sight,
Sweet injuries!
Yet they at these
Themselves displease,
and ’gainst Him rise.

They rise and needs will have
My dear Lord made away;
A murderer they save,
The Prince of life they slay,
Yet cheerful He
to suffering goes,
That He His foes
from thence might free.

In life no house, no home,
My Lord on earth might have;
In death no friendly tomb,
But what a stranger gave.
What may I say?
Heav'n was his home;
But mine the tomb
Wherein he lay.

Here might I stay and sing,
No story so divine;
Never was love, dear King!
Never was grief like Thine.
This is my Friend,
in Whose sweet praise
I all my days
could gladly spend.

Thanks for participating, Dad, and for bringing the grandeur of the organ and the gift to my juicy little universe.