Born

• “Born” is a choral piece written in 2017 using text by Polish poet Wisława Szymborska. The text is from Szymborska’s No End of Fun (1967).
• The piece was commissioned by the choral ensemble, The Crossing, in memory of Margaret Martindale Nally (July 14, 1926 – December 31, 2016).
  • *Note from Rebecca – I didn’t see this written explicitly anywhere, but I believe Margaret Nally was the mother of The Crossing’s conductor, Donald Nally.
• The album Born, featuring music by Michael Gilbertson and Edie Hill performed by The Crossing, won the 2023 Grammy Award for “Best Choral Performance.”

Poem:

So this is his mother.
This small woman.
The gray-eyed procreator.

The boat in which, years ago,
he sailed to shore.

The boat from which he stepped
into the world,
into un-eternity.

Genetrix of the man
with whom I leap through fire.

So this is she, the only one
who didn’t take him
finished and complete.

She herself pulled him
into the skin I know,
bound him to the bones
that are hidden from me.

She herself raised
the gray eyes
that he raised to me.

So this is she, his Alpha.
Why has he shown her to me.

Born.
So he was born, too.
Born like everyone else.
Like me, who will die.

The son of an actual woman.
A new arrival from the body’s depths.
A voyager to Omega

Subject to
his own absence,
on every front,
at any moment.

He hits his head
against a wall
that won’t give way forever.

His movements
dodge and parry
the universal verdict.

I realized
that his journey was already halfway over.

But he didn’t tell me that,
no.

“This is my mother.”
was all he said.¹

1. “Born: music of Edie Hill and Michael Gilbertson,” Navona Records, accessed February 14, 2023, https://www.navonarecords.com/catalog/nv6449/.