Ghosts of Rilke | 1 |
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I. | 2 |
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My companion knew that method, | 3 |
(products all having character | 4 |
which slowly silences the mass loneliness) | 5 |
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“These hearts aren’t machines anymore. | 6 |
They can silently become the next generation.” | 7 |
When a heartbroken star steps into silence | 8 |
Three women will sluggishly die | 9 |
And give a town of brewing mouths | 10 |
full rancid gossip. | 11 |
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Outside, snow. Inside, laughing | 12 |
through immense plastic industrial corridors | 13 |
while drifts blanket sound in. | 14 |
When I grow old | 15 |
I’ll abandon my orchards, | 16 |
Fire tongues fill with gray ash | 17 |
until falling won’t still bring death, | 18 |
But begin our walking | 19 |
toward unknowable noises together. | 20 |
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II. | 21 |
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I’m pressed thin to where | 22 |
scarce on faith, | 23 |
on time, | 24 |
no inheritors are fleeing. | 25 |
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These infinite waters, growing… | 26 |
I am to break but forgot | 27 |
the judgments I’ve read. | 28 |
Ashen poverty, street faces | 29 |
You despise me. | 30 |
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One boy, chocolate brown eyes- | 31 |
he wants, steals figs, fruit juices. | 32 |
You discovered his song was your own. | 33 |
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It reaches your cancer, | 34 |
one hundred years and alone, | 35 |
and remains through mad thoughts | 36 |
rivers in night | 37 |
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We want what long trials and | 38 |
rivers and years (more lifetimes) | 39 |
don’t give- groping, grasping | 40 |
because under something | 41 |
we sometimes find | 42 |
subtlety as it growls. | 43 |
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III. | 44 |
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Her wrinkled hands breathe life, | 45 |
blow dust away, laughing at death’s | 46 |
tall skinny framework. | 47 |
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The years are passing. | 48 |
A yearling grows with | 49 |
what happens through lifetimes, | 50 |
yet hopelessly starving, | 51 |
thinned old books of nature’s hand. | 52 |
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Squaw makes the herd run | 53 |
away that once fell | 54 |
beneath rising and castle like mountains | 55 |
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Morning’s light. | 56 |
We saw images of things she loved with ease | 57 |
and wants to love still | 58 |
and she began to die. | 59 |