Woman Ironing
Instrumentation: SSAA Chorus, Piano
Year Composed: 2001
Duration: 5 minutes, 30 seconds
Text by: Olga Cabral (text is in English)
Pages: 19
Cost: Purchase: $2.00 a copy. (Discounts for large volume sales are possible.)
There is also a version of this piece for soprano solo (with piano or piano 7 flute).
Play the first minute of Woman Ironing, from a live performance by the UTSA Women's Choir, Gary Mabry, conducting.
Woman Ironing
Olga Cabral
I am ironing the dress in which I ran from the prom
I am ironing my favorite dresses of long ago
I am ironing the dresses I did not have
and the ones that I did have, stitched so finely of fog
I am ironing the dress of water in which I met you
I am ironing our tablecloth of sun and our coverlet
of moon
I am ironing the sky
I am folding the clouds like linen
I am ironing smoke
I am ironing sad foreheads and deep wrinkles of despair
I am ironing sackcloth
I am ironing bandages
I am ironing huge damp piles of worries
I am smoothing and patting and folding and hanging over
chairs to air out and dry
I am ironing the tiniest things but for whom or for what
I cannot imagine
I am ironing my shadow which is ironing me.
