In Lieu: No Prisoner Be.
Last edited Wed Feb 25, 2026, 09:04 AM - Edit history (1)
A friend called me up this morning and said he had two free tickets to "The Opera" at a local theater, which turned out to be, after some confusion, the Richardson Auditorium at Princeton University.
He told me that he had no use for opera, that he'd rather "be stabbed in the eye" than go to one, his exact words.
So I called my wife, with whom I fell in love 42 years ago, because she was open to anything in culture - one of the first places I took her when our friendship was developing was to a Nonesuch Records benefit featuring John Cage reading the poems of Marcel Duchamp - and, just as she had when we were young, she said she'd love to go, because it was something we'd never done, and so we went.
The "Opera" turned out to be a live performance of Emily, No Prisoner Be, the poems of Emily Dickenson put to music and sung in the powerful mezzo soprano voice of Joyce Didonato accompanied by the string trio Time for Three with music written and scored by Kevin Puts, played in alternate fits of atonality mixed with fire and bee like breath, violin and violin viola and bass.
Thus spake Emily:
Because I could not stop for Death –
Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.
We slowly drove – He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility –
We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess – in the Ring –
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –
We passed the Setting Sun –
Or rather – He passed Us –
The Dews drew quivering and Chill –
For only Gossamer, my Gown –
My Tippet – only Tulle –
We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground –
The Roof was scarcely visible –
The Cornice – in the Ground –
Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity –
It was a beautiful evening, in the cold night, wrapped in the hedgerows of broken ploughed snow.
I felt my love at 20 again, and I at 31, her child, lost as if returned to Dewey Redman signing in Keith Jarrets Birth
Somewhere off, I knew some doddering pedophilic fool muttered incoherently something made of nothing and and certainly nothing here
Quoth Emily, Sung through Joyce DiDonato's powerful voice:
No Prisoner be—
Where Liberty—
Himself—abide with Thee—
No Prisoner be—
Where Liberty—
Himself—abide with Thee—
No Prisoner be—
Where Liberty—
Himself—abide with Thee—
It was perfection in an vastly imperfect life, and so the with that imperfect rotting organ somewhere off, liberty, himself abided with me.
Ms DiDonato led the sold out house to sing that:
No Prisoner Be-
Where Liberty-
Himself -abide with Thee-
When it was over, I realized I was weeping.
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