A Lament for the Dead Pets of Our Childhood

SSAA, euphonium (or horn), synthesizer, string quartet
8’ (2019)

Text by A. E. Stallings
Commissioned and premiered by the Pepperdine University Women’s Choir, Lincoln Hanks, conductor

A LAMENT FOR THE DEAD PETS OF OUR CHILDHOOD

Even now I dream of rabbits murdered
By loose dogs in the dark, the saved-up voice
Spilt on that last terror, or the springtime
Of lost baby rabbits, grey and blind
As moles, that slipped from birth and from the nest
Into a grey, blind rain, became the mud.
And still I gather up their shapes in dreams,
Those poor, leftover Easter eggs, all grey.

That’s how we found out death: the strangled bird
Undone by a toy hung in his cage,
The foundling that would never last the night,
Be it pigeon, crippled snake, the kitten
Whose very fleas forsook it in the morning
While we nursed a hangover of hope.

After the death of pets, dolls lay too still
And wooden in the cradle, sister, after
We learned death: not hell, no ghosts or angels,
But a cold thing in the image of a warm thing,
Limp as sleep without the twitch of dreams.

—A. E. Stallings

PROGRAM NOTE

​“A huge number of fairy tales and nursery rhymes have dark sides, and we do a disservice to Disneyfy everything for kids. Children are aware that bad things happen, that people die and animals die, and when that’s incorporated into something like a story or a poem, where it’s put into some sort of order, where it’s controlled, it becomes less threatening, and they know they’re dealing with the truth, that we’re not hiding things. But when death isn’t mentioned at all, when the monster is only a monster because he is lonely and wants to make friends, we offer a false sense of security. In fact, it doesn't tangle with any of their real concerns; it’s a completely false world. I think it’s nice to bring the real world into something controlled like a story and a poem. Giving up something, a character, an animal in a story or poem, is practice for giving up something closer later.”—A. E. Stallings in The Cortland Review, February 2002.

More than any other living poet, I find myself drawn to and inspired by the work of Alicia Stallings. There is deep poignancy and beauty in her poetry, masterfully crafted and full of vivid imagery. This poem mourns the loss of childhood innocence while acknowledging the inevitability of that loss. As adults we try in vain to make sense of senseless world, and a part of us yearns to recapture our lost naiveté. And still, there is a melancholic beauty in the universality of this human condition.

I dedicate this piece to Lincoln Hanks and the Pepperdine Women’s Chorus. I would also like to remember two of my close friends who passed away suddenly in the last several months: Corinna Conti and Dominic Gregorio.

—Matthew Brown