Programme notes of "I think that I shall never see..."
by Chan Ka Nin

"I think that I shall never see,

A poem lovely as a tree."

Joyce Kilmer

The first two lines from Joyce Kilmer's rather famous poem, Trees, seem ironically to be apt in view of the fast disappearing forests all over the world today. A musical drama of the vanishing trees is played out by the cello (symbolizing trees), the clarinet (symbolizing birds) and the piano (symbolizing humans) In this one movement work the musical materials such as pitch sets, chord structures, rhythm and form are quasi-symmetrical---very much like a tree whose shape is balanced in an asymmetrical way.

Written in 1993, this work is commissioned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for the Amici.

The performers and composer gratefully acknowledge Counterpoint Press for permission to use material created by the poet Gary Snyder published in Mountains and Rivers Without End (©2008 by Gary Snyder).

Journeys By Gary Snyder

Genji caught a gray bird, fluttering. It

was wounded, so I hit it with a coal shovel:

it stiffened, got straight and symmetrical,

and began to grow in size. I took the bird by

the head with both hands and held it as it

swelled, turning the head from side to side.

The bird became a woman, and I was embracing

her. We walked down a dim-lighted stairway

holding hands, then walking more and more swiftly

through an enormous maze, all underground.

Occasionally we touched surface, and redescended.

As we walked I held a map of our route in

mind––but it became increasingly complex––and

just when I was about to lose the picture,

the woman transferred a piece of fresh-tasting apple

from her mouth to mine. Then I woke.

Through deep forests to the coast,

and stood on a white sandspit looking in:

over lowland swamps and prairies

where no one had ever been

to a view of the Olympic Mountains in a chill clear wind.

We moved across dark stony ground to the great

wall: hundreds of feet high. What was beyond

it, cows? ––then something began to life up from behind.

I shot my arrows, shot arrows at it, but it came––

until we turned and ran. “It’s too big to

fight”—the rising thing a quarter mile across––

it was the flaming pulsing sun. We fled and

stumbled on the bright lit plain.

Where were we––

A girl in a red skirt, [Pause 3 sec.] high heels.

going up the stairs before me in a made-over barn.

Whitewash peeling,

we lived together in the loft,

on cool bare boards.

––Lemme tell you something kid––

back in 1910.

Walking a dusty road through plowed-up fields

at forest-fire time––the fir tree hills dry,

smoke of the far fires blurred the air––

& passed on into woods along a pond,

beneath a big red cedar

to a bank of blinding blue wildflowers

and thick green grass on leveled ground

of hillside where our old house used to stand.

I saw the footings damp and tangled,

and thought my father was in jail,

and wondered why my mother never died,

and thought I ought to bring my sister back.

High up in a yellow-gold

dry range of mountains––

brushy, rocky, cactussy hills

slowly hiking down–––finally can see below,

a sea of clouds.

Lower down, always moving slowly over the

dry ground descending, can see through the breaks

in the clouds: flat land.

Damp green level rice fields, farm houses,

at last to feel the heat and damp.

Descending to this humid, clouded level world:

now I have come to the LOWLAMDS.

Underground building chambers clogged with refuse

discarded furniture, slag, old nails,

rotting plaster, faint wisps, antique newspapers

rattle in the winds that come forever down the hall;

passing, climbing, and on from door to door.

One tiny light bulb left still burning

––now the last––

locked inside is hell.

Movies going, men milling round the posters

in shreds

the movie always running

––we all head in here somewhere;

––years just looking for the bathrooms

huge and filthy, with strange-shaped toilets full of shit.

Dried shit all around, smeared across the walls of the

adjoining room,

and a vast hat rack.

With Lew rode in a bus over the mountains––

rutted roads along the coast of Washington

through groves of redwood, Sitting in the

back of an almost-empty bus,

talking and riding through.

Yellow leaves fluttering down. Passing

through tiny towns at times. Damp cabins

set in dark groves of trees.

Beaches with estuaries and sandbars. I brought

a woman here once long ago,

but passed on through too quick.,

We were following a long river into the mountains.

Finally we rounded a ridge and could see deeper in––

the farther peaks stony and barren, a few alpine trees.

Ko-san and I stood on a point by a cliff, over a

rock-walled canyon. Ko said, “Now we have come to

where we die.” I asked him––what’s that up there,

then––meaning the further mountains.

“That’s the world after death.“ I thought it looked

just like the land we’d been traveling, and couldn’t

see why we should have to die.

Ko grabbed me and pulled me over the cliff––

both of us falling. I hit and I was dead. I saw

my body for a while, then it was gone.

Ko was there too. We were at the bottom of the gorge.

We started drifting up the canyon. “This is the

way to the back country.”