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Cloud Ossuary​-​Symphony No. 4: 3. Bones and All

from Douglas Knehans​—​Cloud Ossuary by Wallinger; Weusten; Brno Philharmonic Orchestra; Toms

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lyrics

I tend to the land grief
It started as barren and broken waste, So I watered it.
The water and salt of tears only grew grass, wild and unruly, not quite living.
On the precipice of this waste were trees; tall, dark and looming.
They sent you.

You were a sparrow, fragile and small
You came wrapped in barbed wire and grime cloaked in
scent of ruin. I untethered you, stitched up your wounds with blood soaked fingers, and fattened you up then returned you
to the wood. The world had not been kind to you, I thought this would be enough.

The grass sprouted flowers, blooming with vengeance, and in them found another.
The rotting carcass, burnt and branded by the world, its flesh, ripped from its bones held together by mere strings of muscle. I imagine you alive, sturdy, clever and striped. Wearing your bandit mask properly—not skewed as it is now—playing a violin.

I reconstruct you, slowly, heart first, on woven blankets from grass. I cover your torn body with
flowers. I tuck your legs, hiding your shattered feet, hiding your ripped neck, laying your head down. You look almost asleep but I know this is never enough.

I have buried so many in this wasteland;
Each one stays frozen in place, exactly where I left them. Later they come for me, gathered in the rainforest of my mind we sit together eating tropical fruits, shrouded by sunlight, a greenish-golden glow bouncing off my skin and refracting off their exposed bones.

They cannot be touched here, things are clean, soft. We are loved by the sun, bones and all.

Katarina Knehans—10/3/2017

credits

from Douglas Knehans​—​Cloud Ossuary, track released January 7, 2022
Judith Weusten, soprano
Brno Philharmonic Orchestra
Mikel Toms, conductor

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Douglas Knehans Cincinnati, Ohio

Knehans has received awards from the American Music Center, the NEA, Opera Australia, The Cannes Film Festival, Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, The National Symphony Orchestra, and many others. His music has been praised by The Washington Post as “beautiful” and that “tells an exciting story;” and by The Miami Herald as “wildly inventive;" by Fanfare Magazine as "...hauntingly beautiful..." ... more

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