The water remembers is an answer to the question that begins Fred Chappell’s poem Narcissus and Echo: Shall the water not remember my hand’s slow gesture…? In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Narcissus is famed for his beauty and falls in love with his own reflection in a pool of water.

Each of the horn’s phrases is mirrored by its own reflection, subtly varied by the water’s ripples.