Ode to Rilke

You walked the castle parapets of the poetic
Your gaze turned toward the Open
Breathing the pure element of vision
Sweeping from off the ocean of eternity,
There to cast forth emptiness from your arms
So that one bird might fly more passionately
As you walked straight into the crushing arms of an angel.

Engulfed in the wind that fed upon your face,
Polishing it to reflect Cosmic Space,
Transforming you so that you could transform Things
Upon the polished surface of your being, you cast them forth
Knowing that they weren’t completely solid, nor you-
Only reflections of the Spirit that shone brightly there.

The World had a need of you.
The Stars waited for you to espy them
Waiting as only lovers can wait for each other

As you stood before a stone tower which a hawk encircled
Which a storm engulfed, never knowing whether
You were the storm, the tower, or the hawk
As you emerged again and again from the mutual depths
You reached within your intimate slumbers with Things,
Brought to a different day that all but few have awakened to
Your self-world charged with violent insight into
Everything you saw, you felt: you embodied.
Yes, you embodied
The tower, the hawk, the storm, the springtime.

Sometimes a wave rolled toward you
As you paced the castle parapets of Duino
Stepping trippingly through the words of a song
A blindman, a drunkard or an idiot might sing,
Letting the world’s sadnesses stumble through you,
Constantly walking directly into the body of an Angel
To see the world “the way a blind angel sees it”

Eyes reversed, looking through your beloved, looking through Her
Nakedness and all that it concealed
As you sang of the unrequited woman, the poet Gaspara Stampa
Who loved for no reason, who loved beyond comprehension, Who loved
Simply because there was no hope and therewith here sole Purpose for being:
To hopelessly love
Saying of here unexampled devotion
That should any girl exclaim “if I could become like her!”
Love might...

I say of you

O mighty, mighty poet

If one could become like You.
You understood the autocratic task of Transformation, knew
Its harsh commandments and undertook the bold exposing
Of human treason before this world, rescuing the honey of beauty
And returning it to the invisible like a bee commuting
Between the Living and the Dead
As you plunged onto the path with only your shadow,
Listening, listening to the soil of your heart,
Listening to the flowers there
To whom you lent your fate

Listening to a tree, to the din of innumerable animals
From inside a crude hut inside the wilderness of the World’s soul,
Opening its door and letting them into the temple
Within your ear.
All that listening such hard work, the vocation of a saint,
But you had the blood for it.

You understood with the ruthlessness
Of an Angel
Both love and death
To the end
A wan smile upon your careful, piercing face,
That undying iris
That you enigmatically carried as a young man
Through the streets of Prague
Forever an angel in your hand.

You caught up to what was yours in the end.