The sickly child, secretary of Rodin’s imposing greatness,
Poverty of wife and child, richness cultivated of inner life.
Patrons sponsoring time in a rainy castle,
Coastal tarns where wet low clouds shelter what wet winds do with
The cold and the poor lighting of evenings and long open nights,
Once clear.

All circumstantial to an inner ability to concentrate and separate the nutrients
As the plant would and animals and abundance of feeling to
Make manifest in people of all ages.

The young girl impossibly on her death bed and the sorrows of her passage
For those left, like you, to sing her tales,
Now sublime as the garments of a Greek Goddess.
See how she travels with us bringing the grains of Italy from the underworld.
See how she sings or by her silent reflection brings out the forever weeping
Of the others and us in consideration, poverty of her losses and our longing.

Don’t get excited too early you seem to caution,
Let the feelings expand our ability to feel first
For the world of things is mute and longing as well to be named by our sadness and
The building exultation of a love’s brief achievement.
Quick but lasting as the spheres immortalize the song,
The female profile, white on the blue vase of the Mediterranean,
Of the warm Sun with the traders and their ships of a different time.
A time not like our century, rent with war.

An ideal for the downcast brutality to run its course and still like
The battered, over pruned tree, that come Spring, pushes the fragrance
Of Spring as balm and bloom.
My favorite poet, dark bird,
Impossible recluse holding hope on the flimsiest yet sentient feeling of
Living things everywhere infused.

Your terrible century, what could you do like the tree in Winter
Sheltering sap and dark potential.
Don’t talk too soon or
Say as much as the dark God who turns
Leaving the flowing robes and jewels of the mind in the mud.

Old fashioned favorite, how move on now in your German and French
With contentious translations and the ground now fully covered,
An oeuvre that saved each address and letter as best we could
And still how completely you are gone.

Not to me only,
You girls, women assigned in the college Lit class to spend an evening or two
With the old lamp, the sticks and the candle,
The cool consideration given within so many things to do.
Perhaps you can come back to it, like me, at another time,
More propitious for our inner life,
A sigh for the mix of joy and sorrow within,
Your own coat shouldered,
Your lovers out in the decadent, deceased brilliance of
Subtle music, careful, near sleep and being so fully awake.

Such is sweet suffering of parting, as
Not quite united fully as we wish, as we could
In your flash of still song,
Bright and dark with the eternal presence
Of the poet’s absence.

By Rolf Stavig
12/02-2020