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Joseph Smith
Restoration

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Lyrics: 1-9. Scene
ANDERSON
They give us the staff,
The mantle, the discontent.
Full of silence, the grass of the land
Hearkens, bends, and dies.
Ice comes in November; winter shall save us,
And we shall move as one, breaking the cold will
That keeps us less than we are.
FORBES
I see clouds over the land, like
Cotton, blown: the wheelwright walks among them
With the mantle of Joseph. Take it and keep it, John.
ANDERSON
If I could hold it, I would think him near.
(He takes the mantle.)
I take his night, his covering...
CLAYTON
O light of morning, light of
Spring, shining sun-stream in the glade,
Vision of my prayer...
ANDERSON
City of darkness,murmuring streets:
Houses hunch behind sagging gates;
Orchards shudder in the squalor of death.
Where shall he be taken? Not even among his people
Shall his grave be known; wolves follow the scent
And circle h1m. They wink in the darkness.
If not in his life, in what can one believe?
The word and prophecy embody themselves,
And when they fail, I honor a wraith.
The wraiths of history evaporate in the real glare
That he withstood, until now.
CLAYTON
'Now the sceptre of evening, the evening star,
The alcove where the voices gather, questioning;
The hush of evening, as if were held the rose
Of the shadow, blooming and breathing among them
The infinite: Follow Me.
ANDERSON
God kept me in my time, and I possess only
The mantle of Joseph. I shall carry
Joseph's mantle in the womb of night.
FORBES
Let us carry him home to Nauvoo.
CLAYTON
The maelstrom breathes
The night wind:
In the vortex and vales of the land
The death's head glimmers,
Careening, suspended, wildly searching.
ANDERSON
Spirit in us that is all
We should have been
And yet is the aspect of our redeemer,
Rise magnificent in the martial gold.
CLAYTON
His hair is the fusion of paths of flame:
His eyes flicker and play
And stay the death's head from the province of man.
ANDERSON
I speak to the dead, in the groves of night;
I speak in the dusk of marble and pine where they lie.
Their quiet piety listens,
Their patience always in them living silently there.
They rest in chapels, in wood and stone,
In the groves of night.
Joseph, they call in the night and in their voiceless being
Gather the living down for their love of the earth.

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