the hopelessly open door

From Sonnets to Orpheus, Rilke

- 25 -

You whom I loved like an unnamed flower,
plucked too soon, I will tell them of you as I
seek your shifting image and again remember,
beautiful companion of the irrepressible cry.

I see first the dancer, checked by lingering fate,
as though her youth were being cast in bronze;
mourning and listening till in celestial response
music poured through her heart's transmuted gate.

Illness drew nearer. Already in the shadow's clasp,
her darkening blood, unconvinced, yet broke the grasp
to pulse forth once more the familiar spring fervor.

From dark and relapse, it often surged rebounding,
mortal and bright, till at last, with a fearful pounding,
it flowed through the hopelessly open door.

(poetry helps me. connecting. send out little threads to the eons of losing - and speaking about it.)