Variation IX
Part 1: How It Looks
There is this thing that exists without a name. I have it. I have seen her in you two.
A photograph of the three of us Her judgment hot Graciously she waits His vitality rains.
For so long we thought he thinks he sits just inside the shadow, the elbow rested upon one knee to support all understanding. We gave him diagnosis after diagnosis per century. Open him up and take it out. She has seen all he has seen.
Still she walks upon. Still a serious man still smirks. Still she laughs uninterested in being made to laugh. Your awe is it in front or below? He and she share the capacity to remove ones’ self from worldly pleasure and turmoil. She lays her head on his hand his elbow on her knee.
She waits while she moves moving north the night no longer long. She moves to move steadily down she sits down nearest you. However you feel when you feel her she is always there.
Have you no spleen? When the waves crest they crest both calm and restless.
When the waves crest they crest both hidden and lived.
The small paperback book laying there worn thin thick skin and care.
She and it she is perhaps the impossibility of lovesickness.
It is quite simple although nothing much is simple.
Oh how feminine innate temperament of you.
What is it that calms the wise?
Portrait of My Father as He Is (after Self-Portrait, 1906, Rainer Maria Rilke)
In tapering eyes, a softness and the peace
Of silver clouds. Also, as much as can be,
The suffering of the people, not noticed
Here, nor carried on the shoulders, though weighted—
Almost lost, both in size and of his own accord.
Most often it’s subtle, in the large failing
Hands (the pain in his uneven knuckles)
Or in the downward turn of the head. He weeps,
In the windward turn of his head. Still and
Singing still, an immense even voice. How deep,
In such a tender frame; he and Things do know.
Minor lips hold all command he cares to assert,
Yet true joy comes wrapped in his loving arms.
When you look at him it is as if he never existed. This empty room listens. If you were sitting there the light would warm you at your back like evening graylight.
Back to back an old woman rests her head on the shoulder of an old woman rests her head on the shoulder back hands not held.
Many heads left many hands to support all misunderstanding.
The windward turn of her head.
Quiet crowd.
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