Let Them Not Say

Composer's Note:

I read this poem on the Poem-A-Day site on the morning it was published there, on January 20, 2017. I found myself re-reading it—a lot—over the following months of encountering a world I did not recognize, daily reports of actions and reactions which felt inhumane, and words by leaders whose motivation seemed to me sociopathic. All I knew unmistakably, viscerally, was that there was so much wrong around us, so much that needed voices to raise up against. As I wrote to the poet Jane Hirshfield when asking permission (in September, 2018) to set her words to music: “With each new day, of course, these words ring more vital; but it also rings as though it’s always been. A protest anthem, a call to arms, a plea to wake up; it might have served generations before us, and feels timeless to me.”

Let Them Not Say was written in 2020 for the East Carolina University Chamber Singers.