A New Eaarth
For Orchestra, SATB Choir and Narrator
Narration Text by Robert Paterson

NARRATOR
Imagine a day, perhaps in the future,
When we will not worry about the environment.

Imagine a day, perhaps today or tomorrow,
When our leaders will come together, will all come together,
To fix what is now almost completely beyond repair.

Imagine that our youth
Will hear our stories about climate change
And know that we did everything possible
To right what we had wronged.

We cannot ignore what is directly in front of us.
We know we should act, and act fast.
We should all act fast,
Because all of this is really happening.
Yet as nations, we don’t do nearly enough.

Has it always been like this?
What did our ancestors say?

CHOIR
Quotes
A tree is known by its fruit. (Zulu Proverb)
Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a songbird will come. (Chinese Proverb)
People protect what they love. (Jacques Cousteau)
Let waters you will not be drinking run freely. (Mexican Proverb)
Give me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling. (Walt Whitman)
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better. (Albert Einstein)
Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed. (Mahatma Gandhi)
We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children. (Native American Proverb)

NARRATOR
The signs are everywhere, yet many of us ignore them.
We think of today, and not tomorrow.
We think of us, and not them.
Some of us don’t think at all.

It has not always been like this.

A gust of wind can grow into a storm.
We know this to be true.
Before we realized what was happening,
It was happening all the time.
Not just there, in some distant land, but here.
At first we didn’t notice.
Then it happened more frequently,
And more forcefully.
Hurricanes and tornados were upon us.

CHOIR
A Dirge (1824)
Percy Bysshe Shelley

Rough wind, that moanest loud
Grief too sad for song;
Wild wind, when sullen cloud
Knells all the night long;
Sad storm whose tears are vain,
Bare woods, whose branches strain,
Deep caves and dreary main,—
Wail, for the world’s wrong!

NARRATOR
A single drop of water makes a difference,
We know this to be true.
Before we realized what was happening,
It was not just one drop, but two, and then five,
Then a small trickle,
Then a stream.
It happened so gradually we didn’t notice.
We didn’t want to notice.
Many of us were too busy driving to notice.
Then the reports came in.
Glaciers were crumbling, and crumbling fast.

CHOIR
All Day I Hear the Noise of Waters (1907)
James Joyce

All day I hear the noise of waters
Making moan,
Sad as the sea-bird is when, going
Forth alone,
He hears the winds cry to the water’s
Monotone.

The grey winds, the cold winds are blowing
Where I go.
I hear the noise of many waters
Far below.
All day, all night, I hear them flowing
To and fro.

NARRATOR
A single degree makes a difference,
We know this to be true.
Before we realized what was happening.
It was not just one degree, but two.
And then three or five or more.
It happened so gradually we didn’t notice.
Some of us didn’t want to notice.
Many of us ignored those who noticed first.
Forest fires seemed to come out of nowhere,
And then they were everywhere.

CHOIR
From A Timbered Choir (1999)
Wendell Berry

Every place had been displaced, every love
unloved, every vow unsworn, every word unmeant
to make way for the passage of the crowd
of the individuated, the autonomous, the self-actuated, the homeless
with their many eyes opened toward the objective
which they did not yet perceive in the far distance,
having never known where they were going,
having never known where they came from.

NARRATOR
The earth is sacred,
We know this to be true.
Before we realized what was happening, it was here.
It was not just there, on some distant continent, it was here.
It was so hidden from our view that at first, we didn’t notice.
Then everything changed.
Food and water became scarce.
Land became overcrowded.
The sky began to turn gray.

CHOIR
There Was A Time (1807)
William Wordsworth

There was a time when meadow, grove and stream,
The earth and every common sight
To me did seem
Apparell’d in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.

The rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the rose;
The moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where’er I go,
That there hath pass’d away a glory from the earth.

NARRATOR
There are sights we will miss, when they are gone:
Glaciers in Greenland,
Polar Bears in Alaska,
Tropical forests of the Amazon.

There are sounds we will miss, when they are gone:
Crickets in a field,
Birds in the trees,
Bees buzzing among flowers.

There are smells we will miss, when they are gone:
Pine trees in winter.
The scent of the great outdoors.
Flowers native to our land.

There are tastes we will miss, when they are gone:
Fresh berries, picked from a hill not far away,
Flowing water, seemingly endless and pure,
Maple syrup from the Northeast Kingdom. *)

We think this won’t happen,
That we have nothing to lose.
But we have never experienced anything like this,
In all of human history.

We can change
We need to change, and we know that.
We know we need to stop, even if the signs say go.
We know we need to slow down, even when we feel like speeding up.
We know we need to take time,
To see the sights,
To hear the sounds,
To smell the smells
To taste the tastes,
To cherish all that is around us,
Before it is too late.

We need to imagine a day, perhaps in the future,
When we will not worry about what we worry about now,
We need to inspire change,
Before it is too late.
We need to believe that we can change,
That we can change who we are, and all those around us;
Change those who refuse to see what’s coming or already here.

Imagine the day.
If we care deeply enough about a better future for our new Eaarth,
That day will come.

CHOIR
We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.

*) This line may be substituted with another food from the region in which this piece is performed that is in danger of disappearing due to climate change.

Original Text © Copyright 2018 Robert Paterson. All Rights Reserved.