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Relinquishment is a movement from secular requiem How to Go On. This movement sets poet Laura Foley's meditation on accepting loss.

 

Composed for the versatile singers of Choral Arts Initiative, How to Go On ultimately finds beauty and release in the embrace of everyday life.

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Relinquishment may be performed as a stand-alone piece or alongside other movements of How to Go On. Purchase this piece for performance through Graphite Marketplace.

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I am looking at pale blue ponds of melted ice

on a frozen river
and in them perfect clouds passing.

Wind sends ripples along the water
and trees cut sharp lines into the sky. Soon

it will be gone, all of it
and I will be sitting in darkness,

sitting by a dark window, glad

for having seen this earth,
her elegant grace,
how she turns away from the sun.
And I will be learning, again,
how to give it all up by simply turning.

How to give it up to darkness, all you love. All of it.
How to give it up again and again.

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—Laura Foley