Music by Pierre Thilloy, Text by Allen J. Frantzen
CIRCLES OF GRIEF
Text by Allen J. Frantzen,
adapted from two letters from the Front and a postcard from Bavaria
(given here in part
only)
1. By the side of the dead (letter by Eugene Emmanuel Lemercier, killed after 8
months in the war, who writes to his mother; 1914)
I write of the goodness of
God
and the horror of these things.
The heaviness of heart that
weighed on me this month
was the anguish to come.
We fought all night,
once,
over great tracts, scattered with wounded and dead
theirs and ours. . . .
2. Veritas praevalebit! (Truth will prevail)
(letter by Howard Boswer, a Scottish
officer who survived the war, who writes to his family, 1917)
If ever a fellow was
grateful I am,
for all the love and loving kindness
that follow me everywhere I go.
Sometimes in the dullness of
life and its discipline
I forget that I am not
alone.
There are times when I feel
things I shouldn't feel,
like what the poem describes so well:
the struggle naught availeth;
the labour and the wounds are vain.
3. Dear Anna (postcard by Hanna Engleman, a German civilian, who writes to her friend, October
1918)
Dear Anna,
I have been thinking of you
often.
Today we buried Maria Bauer,
Bertha's sister and
Lydia's.
Eight days she suffered in
the hospital,
where she died.
Pauline, the sister-in-law,
also dead,
a heart attack before harvest.
September 24, 2005