If I Should Learn

Feb 2025. Art Song for Soprano, Mezzo, and Piano / 3:25

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This understated poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) captures the speaker's muted response to the hypothetical news of a loved one's death. The casual and impersonal manner in which the speaker imagines learning of the loss highlights the emotional detachment and perhaps even numbness that accompanies such a devastating revelation. The poem's brevity and matter-of-fact language evoke a sense of shock and disbelief, as if the speaker is struggling to comprehend the enormity of the situation.

If I Should Learn by Edna St. Vincent Millay

 

If I should learn, in some quite casual way,  

   That you were gone, not to return again—  

Read from the back-page of a paper, say,  

   Held by a neighbor in a subway train,  

How at the corner of this avenue        

   And such a street (so are the papers filled)  

A hurrying man—who happened to be you—  

   At noon to-day had happened to be killed,  

I should not cry aloud—I could not cry  

   Aloud, or wring my hands in such a place—        

I should but watch the station lights rush by  

   With a more careful interest on my face,  

Or raise my eyes and read with greater care  

Where to store furs and how to treat the hair.