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Joseph Smith
Restoration

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Lyrics: 1-11 Duet
NANCY
In our wild meadows we march to the hill of our graves.
Brother Clayton, will the Church die with him?
I cannot die uncertain of the vessel of God he gave us.
CLAYTON
You should not have come to us across the fields.
NANCY
But I have felt the dark angel steady in me,
The angel of death who holds my heart in his hand
And broods over the days I ask from him.
CLAYTON
Does Stephen know?
NANCY
No. I know, Brother Clayton,
Without your telling me,
How he wonders against himself,
Picking up the threads of the terror against us.
I cannot give him my faith
That is shaken grey before the angel,
And I cannot lead him with the hand of death.
He does not know. But I challenge him,
As I thought of doing now, if he were here.
But he is not here, and so the wind and the silences keep me,
And I remain wandering through the dark halls
Of a Church that may die.
CLAYTON
They did not desecrate
Joseph, Nancy.
NANCY
So we have his shell!
Is the Church a shell, Brother Clayton?
If Stephen is nothing, then I am nothing,
For the dark angel makes me lean on him
For all that remains, though I may play the part of his honor.
(She sinks, then laughs lightly.)
I am breathless with all the breath I have;
My spirit is shallow in me.
CLAYTON
Nancy, I shall help you home.
NANCY
For another time?
CLAYTON
We shall go... west. (He catches himself.)
NANCY (Lightly, but sadly.)
Go west? Go west? I am the darkness of hope.
Nauvoo is not in me, for Joseph is dead,
And I am lost to your vision because it lies before me
Beyond the endurance of my pain,
Over the rivers and plains, in the west
That Joseph gave us in the morning of light.
Brother Clayton, where is the Church? Is it in me?
CLAYTON
Stephen should know why...
NANCY
Not Stephen, until I see the Church in him.
CLAYTON
Let me take you home.
(Clayton lifts Nancy into his arms and leaves in the direction she came.)

(End of Act 1)

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