Part of On Track, UYMP's Education Volume for Key Stage 4.

This piece recollects a larger chamber work, A tree telling of Orpheus, my setting of a poem by Denise Levertov. The tree remembers how Orpheus played his lyre and sang to the trees.

We learned to dance,
for he would stop, where the ground was flat,
and words he said
taught us to leap and to wind in and out
around one another      in figures      the lyre’s measure designed.
The singer
laughed till he wept to see us, he was so glad.

From Relearning the Alphabet (1970) published by New Directions Publishing Corporation. Copyright © Denise Levertov 1970. Reproduced by permission of the author.