Rilke Phone Case I guess this is my version Of the way you felt you held Louise Labé, like You had to translate her Poems into the “universal” language of Martyrdom, working from that big Volume of her Oeuvres Published in 1887 Paris by——lol——Charles Boy, a category maybe we both have A strained/strange/syncopated Relationship with. People call your Versions “overtranslated” now, like death Entered their country of love But they were important enough To be notified—— & look at how Messiaen scored his birdsong, Scanner imperfections like tape hiss but still Plenty of information for us to hear Their myriad colors, the songs imbued Wetly with them like 10,000 embarrassing tears Or the water of which just a little Was needed to render you in watercolor Little Modernist aberration your eye Looking a bruised yellow green Blue reddish-brown (I had to ask Kristi to be sure, colorblind as I am, just Like I’d ask her for some music words about The Louange To make me sound like a smarter bird About it. Intervals, yes, & the bizarre Instrumentation fueled by carceral scarcity Like it was screaming No one would do this This way If they didn’t have to the cello telling These difficult truths in its almost-human Voice are there any recordings of you I wonder——a quick google makes it appear Not, even though you lived Until 1926 you were never a song On a cylinder of wax No nightingale Outsang you in the flat background) Like a complicated dress that goes With basically nothing, Stands almost only on its own But of course you have to be in it Or me, Whatever history Dictates through lipstick & the kind of makeup routine You’d manage if you were brave enough To act, less camera & more Commedia with its multitude Of histrionic colors Pouncing all Brakhage on the frame (O how you would’ve understood each other) There are no angels in Labé. The whites of Their countless eyes could not suffice to Contain the debate between Folly & Love As it lives on in the play of color, Its characters Leaning toward or away from the moon Like a giant gray (Kristi’s asleep So I had to google “what color is the moon”) Camera Beaming down on Labé’s Brave costume Or the light between buildings In Sonnet 24 (go ahead go read it) Shakespeare paints this light between Two people, an angelology Of distance——where your true image pictured lies——& god Can’t you just imagine a Hilbert-hotel-walk-in-closet On the head of a pin totally stacked With beautiful clothes Rilke your white collars To lead the angels out of the paintings Louise’s jodhpurs her riding boots & Rope Arlecchino’s many-colored tights & The simple outfit Messiaen Wore to the church organ each Sunday I don’t think you ever translated William The way you liturgized our Lionnoize rider People like to say you & he had an Inverted relationship To the human, him using it to figure The non- & you preferring the other Direction, trying To share the notes every other thing On god’s great supervenience ladder Would give us in our many scenes & does give us, whether we take them Or can even read them or hear them or not, A bird scrawling on the Angelic Doctor’s script Try it with a little more wind here A little more blue in the eye Kristi’s still sleeping but not even she Can help me as I google “what color were Rilke’s eyes” no one thought to write it out & The b&w photographs are no help Paula Moderson-Becker’s portrait (I mistyped “poetrait” first, ha) is all I have to go on But we already learned two stanzas ago How painters lie They are not like birds they have Ugly motives sometimes Hearts that scar & paints that, though they could mix to get Your eye color right, might not on purpose Full flower five the ivy climbs Five stories not a single overlapping Plot line node petiole axillary bud buriest thy content I didn’t know Those little Koch snowflake spikes On the leaves were called teeth They chew through landlords’ mortar Admirably & the birds eat the bugs Spider mites aphids scale and mealy Feeding on the leaves pretend we Needed any more than soap & water To rinse off the mites a certainty I think you would’ve loved baptism Of lighter underside & stomata & clean bird feet from which to pitch A song Yvonne Loriod’s XIV. Regard des anges From the Vingt regards New stars falling like hammers Trombone flames of angels ripped through With jealousy Not having been trusted with love The greatest eccentricities of which Are a letting-be Of the music in your bird head Your bird head d. 17 May 2010
Tom Snarsky teaches mathematics at Malden High School in Malden, Massachusetts, USA. His collection Light-Up Swan will be published in 2021 by Ornithopter Press
Amethyst Review 