In order to see
Rilke closed his eyes
Monique Saint Hélier said.
In order to speak he employed
the costly services of silence.
How illness surprised them all
lying in wait in dark hedgerows.
When death stepped into the road
a slender white figure, a stranger
asking for directions to the community.
Then some form that thrives unseen
and is only imagined, changes direction
from that place no light reaches
at the deepest part of the ocean.
So she was left by the open window
as doctors and machines crowded in.
Paris stole through like a cat at night,
over-scented, quivering, mewling
for human warmth and new prey,
unknowing of the love she had
already exhausted on that creature
exploring every room restlessly,
ignoring the remembered portraits
she was desperately sculpting,
within a narrowing shaft of light.