Now, turning the leaf on the Winterreise project, we are setting our sights on the history of the Civil Rights Movement with our upcoming program “Journey Toward Freedom”. This program is inspired by the heroic efforts of so many who sought to create a better, truer America.
Since learning the poem, The Cloths of Heaven by W.B. Yeats, I have for some reason always associated it with the work of Dr. Martin Luther King. And so we’ll feature the song setting by Dunhill on our Civil Rights concert.
But for now, here is the poem. You can read or listen.
Harvey Keitel reading Yeats “The Cloths of Heaven”
He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
Had I the heaven’s embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
William Butler Yeats