A Beating of Wings

You distance yourself from me, time,

And wound me with your beating wings.

How could my mouth forget a line?

What's to do about quotidian things?

I have no lover left, no home,

No place to reorder my life.

The things that summon me to strife

Grow rich and cut me to the bone.

Freely imitated from a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke in his Neue Gedichte (1907), who entitled it simply "The Poet":

Der Dichter

Du entfernst dich von mir, du Stunde.

Wunden schlägt mir dein Flügelschlag.

Allein: was soll ich mit meinem Munde?

Mit meiner Nacht? Mit meinem Tag?

Ich habe keine Geliebte, kein Haus,

Keine Stelle auf der ich lebe

Alle Dinge, an die ich mich gebe,

Werden reich und geben mich aus.

"No ideas but in things," says William Carlos Williams; I dedicate these lines, then, to my old wristwatch, bought at a Roses discount store for $8.99 circa 1989/90, but now no longer wearable, alas, and running down its final battery. Ave atque vale.

Friday, September 4, 2026