Notes for Faith in Cerulean:

Faith in Cerulean is a poem whose first drafts date back to 1994. It is a meditation on dusk and a meditation on the nature of transition. So when Jeffrey Bernstein asked me for a piece commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Occidental College Glee Club, this poem re-surfaced as a suitable lyric. It spoke to me personally as I adjusted to a new chapter of my life in academia.

I hope it might also speak to the journey of this venerable institution, with my sincerest wish that its next 100 years are even more brilliant than its first.

Andre Myers
26 September 2006
Los Angeles

(duration: 6'14") [requires Flash]


        Faith in Cerulean

You planted your grief in the ground
so as not to make a swamp of

your humors. Now your laments
grow in the earth, and sprout

clothed in weeping foliage.
And the Lord, and his wonder

will soon be shrouded during
day by opaque sheets made

of wailing shadow. Your stare,
wild, orange, true, into this

shade of blue that makes all trees
black in a way that

silences the eye, traces
a vague hope onto this wind's

air, onto this darkening
opus. Your songs grow swiftly

near the stoic joints of long
sleeping roots, loosening,

by fire in seeds that you
planted. Know your troubled ciphers,

in them, still burn, but I hope that
your search, your thirst, your lust for

pain ends.

'Cause I know you are trying
the very best you can!

I know that you planted a tree
in faith, in its ground, its
terrifying abundance.

I know that we live and move
through time like dusk,
that we be movement, and thus

make music of lovers
the lion and lizard keep.
And aint all that cause for joy?

Copyright 2006 by Andre Myers. All rights reserved.