Welcome to the Valley of the Poets. . .

The Robert Frost Foundation and
Essex Chamber Music Players

present
Robert Frost Poetry and Music Festival

Sunday, April 27, 2025
2-4:30 PM Lawrence Public Library
51 Lawrence St.
Lawrence, MA

Admission - free
Limited parking on the side of the library; free Sunday parking at meters.

Spanish translations and recitation by Rhina Espaillat
Music: John Tavano- Guitar
English: Alfred Nicol

Un pájaro cualquiera

A veces he querido que alejara
Su vuelo de mi casa, o no cantara;

Dando palmadas, trato de espantarlo,
Exasperado y agotado de escucharlo.

La culpa, en parte, es mía, bien se sabe.
El cantor no es culpable de su clave.

Y claro está que hay algo repugnante
En el deseo de callar cualquier cantante.

Music: Matteo Carcassi Study in A Minor

A Minor Bird
I have wished a bird would fly away,
And not sing by my house all day;

Have clapped my hands at him from the door
When it seemed as if I could bear no more.

The fault must partly have been in me.
The bird was not to blame for his key.

And of course there must be something wrong
In wanting to silence any song.

El tordo
Se trata de un cantante muy famoso;
en pleno estío, en el verdor frondoso,
de tronco en tronco su cantar resuena.
"Se ajan las ojas," dice; "en cuanto a flores,
si en julio hay una,en abril, una decena."
Dice que ya cayeron los primeros
capullos que perdieron sus albores—
pera y cereza—en falsos aguaceros,
y otra caída verá el fruto caído.
Dice que al polvo todo se ha rendido.
Si fuera como todos, callaría,
si no supiera cantar sin hacer canto.
La pregunta que aún sin verbo formaría
es qué se hará con lo que mengua tanto.

Music:
A variation on Jobim's Dindy, arranged by John Tavano

The Oven Bird

There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.

Arbol vecino

Arbol vecino, ventana verde,
cierro el postigo si el sol se va;
pero entre nosotros dos,
ojalánunca se cierre.

Cabeza ilusa que del terruñose eleva,
leve como las nubes,
jamás sabrán tus lenguas volubles
hablar profundo.

Pero te he visto, árbol, sacudido,
y si me has visto una vez soñando,
febril me has visto, y enajenado,
casi perdido.

Genial y sabia Suerte, que supo
las dos cabezas juntar un dia:
la tuya, atenta al tiempo;
y la mía,al tiempo oculto.

Music: Joao Pernambuco Sound of Bells

Tree at My Window

Tree at my window, window tree,
My sash is lowered when night comes on;
But let there never be curtain drawn
Between you and me.

Vague dream head lifted out of the ground,
And thing next most diffuse to cloud,
Not all your light tongues talking aloud
Could be profound.

But tree, I have seen you taken and tossed,
And if you have seen me when I slept,
You have seen me when I was taken and swept
And all but lost.

That day she put our heads together,
Fate had her imagination about her,
Your head so much concerned with outer,
Mine with inner, weather.


La tienda de campaña

Es ella como tienda de campaña
de seda, a mediodía, en pleno prado,
cuando ha secado el rocío el sol que baña
la brisa veraniega, y relajado
cada cuerda, en sus cables de retén
meciéndose de su poste central
(signo del alma segura en el vaivén,
que indica su destino celestial);
ningun lazo le estorba; encadenada
por el pensar, por multiples sedosos
vínculos de amor al mundo atada,
luce tan leve que si en aires caprichosos
una que otra cinta no tensara,
de su ligera prisión ni se enterara.

Music: John Tavano La Girafe

The Silken Tent

She is as in a field of silken tent
At midday when the sunny summer breeze
Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,
So that in guys it gently sways at ease,
And its supporting central cedar pole,
That is its pinnacle to heavenward
And signifies the sureness of the soul,
Seems to owe naught to any single cord,
But strictly held by none, is loosely bound
By countless silken ties of love and thought
To every thing on earth the compass round,
And only by one's going slightly taut
In the capriciousness of summer air
Is of the slightest bondage made aware.


Nunca iamás cambiará ese trino

Bién lo creía, y siempre declaraba
Que en su jardín el canto que se oía
No era sólo aves: algo más cantaba.
Era la voz de Eva, todo el día—
Sin palabras, cantando un sentimiento
Con su tono--tan suave su elocuencia--
Y dispersaba ese tono con el viento
Que dejó con las aves su influencia.
Sea como sea, unieron su cantar.
Mucho ha dejado el bosque que converse
Ese coro que jamás podrá cambiar,
Ni en su verdor la melodía perderse,
Ni faltar Eva jamás en ese trino.
Precisamente a lograr eso vino.

Music: Lennon/McCartney: Blackbird

Never Again Would Birds' Song Be The Same

He would declare and could himself believe
That the birds there in all the garden round
From having heard the daylong voice of Eve
Had added to their own an oversound,
Her tone of meaning but without the words.
Admittedly an eloquence so soft
Could only have had an influence on birds
When call or laughter carried it aloft.
Be that as may be, she was in their song.
Moreover her voice upon their voices crossed
Had now persisted in the woods so long
That probably it would never be lost.
Never again would birds' song be the same.
And to do that to birds was why she came.