VI

Rose, you majesty-once, to the ancients
  you were
just a calyx with the simplest of rims.
But for us, you are the full, the numberless flower,
the inexhaustible countenance.

In your wealth you seem to be wearing
  gown upon gown
upon a body of nothing but light;
yet each separatae petal is at the same time
  the negation
of all clothing and the refusal of it.

Your fragrance has been calling its
  sweetest names
in our direction, for hundreds of years;
suddenly it hangs in the air like fame.

Even so, we have never know what to call
  it; we guess...
And memory is filled with it unawares
which we prayed for from hours that
  belong to us.
-Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus

Goldenhair

lean out of the window,
Goldenhair,
I heard you singing
a merry air.

My book was closed;
I read no more,
watching the fire dance
on the floor.

I have left my book,
I have left my room,
for I heard you singing
through the gloom.

singing and singing
a merry air,
lean out of the window,
Goldenhair.

-James Joyce, Chamber Music

setsubi

  Life is hard to find and once found is hard to do anything with, so a glimpse of people caught in a similar strain of circumstances is certainly a bit different.  In any case, it's that kind of tears that are still there to see that make you wonder if what you thought was true was so.  Every year we go through these manifestations and every year it's different but much the same as always.  So you wonder, you walk around on the pavement late at night, not paying attention to where you are going, spending more money than you have in the account, and thinking of one person somewhere in a building full of equipment.