Rilke's Book of Hours 1,9

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

I read it hear in your very word,
in the story of the gestures
with which your hands cupped themselves
around our becoming — limiting, warm.

You said live out loud, and die you said lightly,
and over and over again you said be.

But before the first death came murder.
A fracture broke across the rings you'd ripened.
A screaming shattered the voices

that had just come together to speak you,
to make of you a bridge
over the chasm of everything.

And what they have stammered ever since
are fragments
of your ancient name.

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