| FIRST DIALOGUE - PRELUDIUM | |
| Chorus: | Four in the morning. |
| Sweating again, | |
| A hand, | |
| A frail hand reaches for the panic button. | |
| Death: | Good morning my son, |
| I trust that you are ready for your journey. | |
| Death: | O I am death and in the end, Everyman is my son and I would care for you. |
| Youth: | Is this how you take me, Death, Death? |
| Like a thief, laying heavy sleep on my eyes as you descend to my side. | |
| I am not ready for my journey, | |
| I have no-one to comfort me, | |
| No friend to help me along the way | |
| I am still young, pass me by. | |
| Death: | I am a friend and do not come to punish you, |
| You will sleep sweetly in my arms. | |
| Youth: | Death, you approach me with such gentle steps, |
| Settle yourself immovably by my side. | |
| I cannot understand the things you say. | |
| I don’t want your comfort, this life is mine and I’ll do what I want. | |
| You do not belong here. | |
| Death: | Death belongs to life as birth does. The walk is in the laying down of the foot as in the raising of it. |
| FIRST CHORALE | |
| Youth: | Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, |
| but for the heart to conquer it. | |
| Chorus: | He may cry out for rest, peace and dignity, |
| But he will get infusions, transfusions, a heart machine or a tracheotomy. | |
| Youth: | Let me not look for allies in life’s battlefield, |
| But to my own strength. | |
| Chorus: | He may want one single person to stop for one minute |
| So that he can ask one single question | |
| But he will get a dozen people all busily preoccupied but not with him as a person. | |
| Youth: | Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved, |
| But hope for patience to win my freedom | |
| Chorus: | He may wish to fight it all but it is a useless fight, |
| Since all this is done in the fight for his life. | |
| SECOND DIALOGUE - DENIAL | |
| Youth: | No, not me, it cannot be true. |
| Death: | Since in your unconscious mind you are immortal, |
| It is inconceivable for you to acknowledge that you have also to face Death. | |
| Youth: | I just need to see another consultant. |
| I need a better explanation for my troubles. | |
| Death: | You consider the possibility of your own death for a while, |
| You put these thoughts away to pursue your own life. | |
| SECOND CHORALE | |
| Chorus: | We cannot look at the sun all the time, |
| We cannot face Death all the time | |
| THIRD DIALOGUE - ANGER | |
| Youth: | Why me? |
| Why not someone else? | |
| Chorus: | You would be angry if all your activities were interrupted so prematurely; |
| If you had put some hard earned money aside to enjoy a few years of rest, only to be confronted with the fact that this is not for you. | |
| Death: | I had hoped for a calm end to your struggles, |
| I thought your debts were paid, your battles won. | |
| And now you could thankfully sleep in my lap. | |
| But not I know that you can no more close your eyes in slumber. | |
| Youth: | No. I am still alive, don’t forget that. |
| You can hear my voice. | |
| I’m not dead yet. | |
| Death: | You must leave family and friends. All that is discardable must remain behind. |
| Youth: | I no longer have a family, they’ve disowned me. |
| But I’m not ready to leave yet. | |
| I want a little more time. | |
| I’ve never had time of my own, time to be me. | |
| I’m sick of people rushing busily around just to remind me that I can’t even stand on my own two feet any more. | |
| Doctors are no good, | |
| They don’t even know what tests to require, | |
| What diet to prescribe, | |
| They keep patients too long in hospital. | |
| Death: | No-one understands what you cry, |
| They wonder, | |
| They want to know the cause. | |
| Youth: | Doctors & drugs are a greater torment than the illness itself. |
| Different labelled bottles, different shaped pill-boxes all piled up. | |
| Death: | You read the world wrong and say that it deceives you. |
| THIRD CHORALE | |
| Chorus: | Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high; |
| Where knowledge is free, | |
| Where the world has not been broken into fragments by narrow domestic walls, | |
| Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection, | |
| The mind led forward into ever widening thought. | |
| FOURTH DIALOGUE - BARGAINING | |
| Youth: | Please, just give me a few days more. |
| A few days without pain or physical discomfort. | |
| Silence) | |
| Youth: | You don’t respond to my pleas. |
| O Death, grant me just this one wish, | |
| I will ask for no more favours from you. | |
| Silence) | |
| Youth: | Now I know I can no more close my eyes in slumber. |
| Why did you speak so softly to me, Death, Death, | |
| Creep upon me, | |
| Watch me so stealthily. | |
| FOURTH CHORALE | |
| Chorus: | The water in a vessel is sparkling |
| The water in the sea is dark | |
| The small truth has words that are clear | |
| The greatest truth has great silence. | |
| FIFTH DIALOGUE - DEPRESSION | |
| Youth: | What’s the use... |
| I cannot fight it any longer. | |
| Death: | You loiter alone amidst them all |
| Each day hangs so heavily | |
| People here are like worms | |
| Crawling between bricks | |
| There is no love | |
| There is no gaiety | |
| Youth: | The gave me no hope |
| All I could do was wait for my end. | |
| Death: | Day’s end has come, |
| The world is darkening. | |
| Youth: | In desperate hope I go and search in all the corners of my room. |
| I find nothing. | |
| But infinite is your mansion my Lord | |
| Seeking, I have come to your door. | |
| FIFTH CHORALE | |
| Chorus: | The world rushes on over the strings of the lingering heart making the music of sadness. |
| SIXTH DIALOGUE -ACCEPTANCE | |
| Death: | There seem to be people all around you |
| You cannot speak your heart in case they hear you. | |
| Weeping is wasted here | |
| It is stopped by the walls. | |
| Your weeping always comes back to you. | |
| Youth: | I have come to the brink of eternity |
| From which nothing can vanish. | |
| No hope, no happiness, | |
| No vision of a face seen through tears. | |
| Death: | The storm of last night has crowned this morning with a golden peace. |
| Youth: | Bid me farewell my brothers, |
| I bow to you all and take my departure. | |
| Now the day has dawned. | |
| The lamp that lit my dark corner is out. | |
| A summons has come. | |
| I am ready for my journey. | |
| Death: | So, come my son. |
| Youth: | I have no more energy to fight you. |
| Just grant me time for rest before we being our journey. | |
| The pain has gone, the struggle is over. | |
| There comes the time for final rest. | |
| Youth: | I shall go down where the boat is moored, Death, Death, |
| To the sea where the wind rolls darkness towards me from infinity, | |
| I may see black clouds massing | |
| In the far Northeast corner of the sky, | |
| Fiery snakes of lightening may rear up with their hoods raised. | |
| But I shall not flinch in unfounded fear. | |
| I shall press silently, unswervingly, | |
| Across that storming sea, Death, Death. | |
| SIXTH CHORALE | |
| Chorus: | Death, your servant is at my door. He has crossed the unknown sea and brought you to my home. The night is dark and my heart is fearful. It is thy messenger who stands at my door. |
| Death will return with his errand done, leaving a dark shadow on the morning. | |
| In that desolate home, only a forlorn self will remain as a last offering. | |
| FINAL CHORUS | |
| Chorus: | O come sweet and lovely Death |
| Bring rest to my tired and weary soul | |
| O come sweet and lovely Death | |
| Give my poor torn body its relief. | |
| My journey has been short and hard | |
| I have struggled long and bitterly | |
| Against this dread disease and its attendants | |
| Fought those filled with prejudice and scorn | |
| O come sweet and lovely Death | |
| Only now am I ready for thee | |
| I will relinquish this frail frame | |
| O come sweet and lovely Death | |
| I ache to journey with thee | |
Robert Hugill, incorporating poetry by Rabindranath Tagore