The eleventh song in Michael Hersch's vocal cycle on texts of Dante Alighieri and Ezra Pound.
For neither rain, nor hail, nor snow, nor dew,
Nor frost falls here above the three shallow steps
Which make the stairway at the entrance below:
... Now may it please you to let me know who you were,
And why you have lain here so many centuries;
Let me understand all this from your lips.
... Now you can understand ...
... Treating shadows as if they were solid things.
- Dante Alighieri (trans. C.H. Sisson)
