Bamboo [poem by
Hagiwara Sakutaro]
Performed in May 2024 at Milton Court Concert Hall, Bamboo featured Olivia as principal vocal soloist alongside the Guildhall Session Singers. The work is based on the poem of the same name by Sakutarō Hagiwara, one of the most influential poets of Japan's Taishō and early Shōwa periods.
The poem reflects on the unrelenting passage of time through the image of bamboo, which continues to grow steadily and persistently regardless of human concerns. Its deceptively simple description of a quiet bamboo grove conceals a deeper meditation on the quiet power of time and nature. While our own lives may feel immediate and all-consuming, the world continues its silent, unwavering course beyond our individual experience.
A rough translation of the poem is provided below:
In the shining earth the bamboo grows,
the blue-green bamboo grows,
underground the roots of bamboo grow,
roots that gradually taper off
with fine hairs sprouting from their tips,
hazy fine hairs faintly growing,
faintly trembling.
In the adversarial earth the bamboo grows,
aboveground the bamboo sharply grows,
with its frozen joints going rin, rin,
at the base of the base sky bamboo grows,
bamboo, bamboo, bamboo grows.