Video Information

• Choir: The Girl Choir of South Florida
• Piece: Now I Become Myself
• Composer:  Gwyneth Walker
• Conductor:  Wallis Peterson
• Voices:  SSAA
• Sheet Music:   www.sheetmusicplus.com/ti...  
• Genres: Contemporary
• "Now I Become Myself" by Gwyneth Walker. Text by May Sarton.
  
  Recorded live on May 3, 2015, at All Saints Episcopal Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Performed by the Concert Choir ensemble of the Girl Choir of South Florida. Artistic Dire...  more"Now I Become Myself" by Gwyneth Walker. Text by May Sarton.
  
  Recorded live on May 3, 2015, at All Saints Episcopal Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Performed by the Concert Choir ensemble of the Girl Choir of South Florida. Artistic Director: Wallis Peterson, Accompanist: Gayle Giese.
  
  
  Now I become myself. It's taken
  Time, many years and places;
  I have been dissolved and shaken,
  Worn other people's faces,
  Run madly, as if Time were there,
  Terribly old, crying a warning,
  "Hurry, you will be dead before--"
  (What? Before you reach the morning?
  Or the end of the poem is clear?
  Or love safe in the walled city?)
  Now to stand still, to be here,
  Feel my own weight and density!
  The black shadow on the paper
  Is my hand; the shadow of a word
  As thought shapes the shaper
  Falls heavy on the page, is heard.
  All fuses now, falls into place
  From wish to action, word to silence,
  My work, my love, my time, my face
  Gathered into one intense
  Gesture of growing like a plant.
  As slowly as the ripening fruit
  Fertile, detached, and always spent,
  Falls but does not exhaust the root,
  So all the poem is, can give,
  Grows in me to become the song,
  Made so and rooted by love.
  Now there is time and Time is young.
  O, in this single hour I live
  All of myself and do not move.
  I, the pursued, who madly ran,
  Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!  less