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Dyr Bul Shchyl For Geoffrey Gilbert

One day his wife had been asked to sculpt She had been told to stop sculpting she saw this sculpture in a book her mind was overpowered by Apollo’s torso

Apollo would not let her move her hands She was a dead woman to him Would she confess her sins or would she not Before Apollo, Before Delphi there was Orpheus

I remember the convention & shrank, incapable of forgetting the look in Clara Westhoff’s eyes how could I explain that this is not America It seemed too dark & 1 did not want to go to Disneyland

Compared to their bodies They were rubbish Pretending to be fine artists On condition that I was not

Is it him Is he the one who shortens prohibitively the light against the husband of the Western Wind & demanding a strength equal to his own fails to understand the wind as much other than an irritating votary

her face the least like any sculptress he has ever met too heavy to be light too light to be heavy failing to use her mouth to issue conventional demands would Rainer and Clara be godly enough yet or are they not dead enough not known enough

for effect the pretence can be seen, scandal wiped its obscene brow for effect the portrait of Clara Westhoff was painted to give her the look of a tragedy queen

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She was not attracted to him She wanted Rilke back from Paris She was cold, it was damp in the house Their baby was coughing she was afraid

Had he been a Poet she would not have stayed In the dark village. In Worpswede. Life was slower than in Paris, only Apollo was a politician,

Distracted, easily influenced, memorable, haunting his statutory descendants with extinct nights that broke the midnight skies into clouds of paler nights, entrances that upon a second look proved convex

lying eyes, deceitful poses of farewell following a life full of desire pressing the thorns of the stem of the rose into her flesh hard bone wondering why this german was long anxious that the distance would be cut.

GRACE LAKE

'unknit that' on salt the eddies flee the colours flit the players steam the discourse salt heat crystalline rubbed soaked for plant refin the use returns to the people from the caves of a dress turned to salt a desert artist of mordent paint a yellow cord to snip & smudge caked twist made to answer for absence in close heat thirst absorbed by presence of salt, wax drip ink fix up the sand flowed the salt aeons of sinking sloping city uneasy salt fate accident of infinitesimal weave pointillist wife turned to a pillar of the establishment that can't hold water without melting to cloud for the fall took a daughter when man his freedom won she was runnelled down to the refinery to purify her of what remained of life