After Rainer Maria Rilke, The Book of Hours (III, 33)
He came forth like a new beginning.
A portent, a fevered dream, an ultimatum.
Even asleep I knew how momentous
it was, that confrontation of ours
between blossom and rot. You’ll say
it’s a lie, but in the years after,
the shoebox under my bed filled up
with blue, wet-bird letters from God.
He’d been sending them down
and across the borders of thought.
What could I possibly do?
I took them all in. The first one
burst open. I buried it in the sod
under clouds like blimp mailboxes
pouring rain. A river rushed
through my mouth: cold and green.
Each letter was written in cursive
sadness only. He told me how
there was so much promise in pain—
the one faithful thing certain
to make us less mean, or grant
what we wished for: to have been
happy, unhappy, insane or not,
to have been lonely, to have been.
