This creative and unusual work uses text painting, sound effects, and crafty choral writing to bring to life the text written by Abraham Koplowicz, a Jewish boy who was exterminated by the Nazis during the Holocaust. He wrote this poem during the time that his family was trapped in the Lodz ghetto. The terror of the storm represents a deeper terror: the "swallow and his wife ... wondering what will come next" allegorically speaks for the people. So it is with the entire poem, which results in a powerful piece of music equally effective accompanied by piano or by chamber orchestra.