the last burnt sienna crayon

I’ve not studied these poems, the Sonnets to Orpheus. Not in any official way, I have just read them. And I have no literary criticism of worth (Rilke didn’t believe in the worth of literary criticism anyway), or at least I have none that would be wholly approved of by the academics. I just know when an image appeals to me. And these images appeal to me. The particular things that strike a chord with me in this particular poem are the first stanza and the first sentence of the final stanza.

Sonnets to Orpheus Part 2, XII by Rainer Maria Rilke

Want the change. Be inspired by the flame
where everything shines as it disappears.
The artist, when sketching, loves nothing so much
as the curve of the body as it turns away.

What locks itself in sameness has congealed.
Is it safer to be gray and numb?
What turns hard becomes rigid
and is easily shattered.

Pour yourself out like a fountain.
Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking
finishes often at the start, and, with ending, begins.

Every happiness is the child of a separation
it did not think it could survive. And Daphne, becoming a laurel,
dares you to become the wind.

Do you know the story of Orpheus? At least skim through the link if you don’t (don’t bother looking it up on wikipedia, it’s too cold, academic and detached) and try to imagine the utter despair of winning back your love, your life, from the grip of Hades then losing everything in an instant through the accident of your own impatient desires, because you couldn’t wait.

There is much more than a lesson in romance here. I suppose it applies to all the passions of our lives. We try too hard, we can’t wait, we grasp . . . and we lose.

The first stanza is full of the depth of loss. But within that an urging to find some kind of beauty and inspiration through it.

The artist, when sketching, loves nothing so much
as the curve of the body as it turns away.

“as it turns away.”

Then in the last verse with:

Every happiness is the child of a separation
it did not think it could survive.

Is this a line of hope in the midst of utter tragedy?

“Want the change.”

“What locks itself in sameness has congealed.”

“Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking
finishes often at the start, and, with ending, begins.”

Maybe it’s just me.

Words are sticking in my fingers this evening. And a lump forms out of the weight of everything that I am trying to carry on my own, rising from the middle of my chest to my throat. . . and stops there. Stifling.

These are the images that I am told can make great poetry, great photographs, great music. But I am not enough of an artist to bring forth any riches there.

So I sit and stare at the blank page, writing wordless poetry. Only feeling, not articulating, the verse pouring out of a locked up chamber, too full to be still, yet silent, by consequence and necessity.

And I have known them all already, known them all. . .
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons,
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all _
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawlling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

You see, what Heather commented on that poem, although I know it was a bit tongue in cheek, is precisely what I’m talking about. A poem is, I feel, as much about the reader as it is about the writer, because all readings and meanings can be valid. I read it one way, she read it and, because she’s a different person with different things in her own head, she imediately thought of something different. (whether tongue in cheek or not, the image occured to her.)

I’ve been in so many discussions where people try to say “this is what this means” or “this is what the writer wanted you to think”, and I suppose just as all readers are different, all writers are different and I suppose some writers do want to “force your hand” and make you think and feel a specific thing by what they write. I suppose, if I’m honest, of course there’s a bit of that in what I write too. But the older I get, the more I try not to do that, and the more I try to just ‘let it be’ without forcing anyone to ‘get it’.

Because isn’t that what is ideal to be like with other people? Just ‘letting them be’ who they are, with all of their myriad meanings and interpretations, rather than forcing them to be and do and communicate just what we want from them?

“Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden.”

t.s. eliot

haven’t been able to write much today. lots to say, three entries begun, just can’t seem to complete them right now.

I run to where you will not be
Amongst the shelves of poetry
The dusty worn out libraries
That live inside my mind

I’m here but hope you will not see
I hide from you and look for me
Where silence and the voice agree
For once I understand

Have been scouring my old writing books, notepads and journals, and the journey has been facinating. Perhaps I’ll find a starting point? Perhaps I kept them to begin with because I used to think that there was something there worth not throwing out. I’ve thrown so much out.

I don’t mind looking back. Sometimes I find it more hopeful than looking forward.