Rilke and Us
Dozing off near midnight…
wife my angel beside me
sitting with her iPhone -
what’s on her screen?
Duino Elegy Eight -
the ‘wild’ topic set
for her Psych essay
fretting her nerves away.
What a load of excess!
(she exclaims) effusion!
such overblown rhetoric!
Boil it down and what’s
left? - confusion.
Who did he think he was?
This shocks me, shakes me free
a little; whose side am I on?
Asleep, I dream: some cousin
of hers tells her she needs
his help - he's coming
to convert her to Rilke,
sallying forth posthaste
from his Austrian Schloss
by the next fast train -
and I’d have to clean the house.
That means the flat -
its hard floor afloat
with dog-hair dust-balls;
windows smeared - its
their exhalations;
shaming discolorations
of mat and rug,
and atmosphere of fug.
I wake and speak:
your cousin wants to come…
She doesn’t have such a cousin.
I sleep again relieved,
then saying to myself:
I should go to him;
looking up train schedules,
about to pack formal clothes
I don’t have, cane and spats,
furled umbrella, homburg hats.
I may not be but look
(dark rings under visionary eyes)
the most spiritual dandy
ever to step out of a book.
But the dogs! our loving
needy fellow-creatures -
I can’t leave them
for more than a few hours.
I’ll have to be back quick
for their moist-tongue greetings
their trust in our bounty,
our fresh air outings,
mortal fleshly angels
airborne and grounded.
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