The Little AU: Summer Winds: Change
The little AU: Summer Winds: Change
slashfairy
~~
And these things, whose lives
are lived in leaving-they understand when you praise them.
Perishing, they turn to us, the most perishable, for help.
They want us to change them completely in our invisible hearts,
oh-forever-into us! Whoever we may finally be.
Earth, isn't this what you want: to resurrect
in us invisibly? Isn't it your dream
to be invisible one day? Earth! Invisible!
What's your urgent charge, if not transformation?
Earth, my love, I will.
-Rilke, translated by Poulin
He clicks close and gets up from the table.
Everything Viggo posts at Perceval these days is about savoring life. About choosing life, about taking responsibility for the gift of living, and living to the fullest.
Joyce, Rilke, Sor Juana, either brought forth from memory, mistakes and all, or typed out by hand from a book pulled off the shelves.
It's an education in itself, keeping up with Viggo, Orlando thinks, closing the laptop, putting in its bag. His smile is wide, eyes are bright. Today he's got a chance for lunch with Karl, first time in ages, and he's full of poetry and Viggo and the energy that comes with being back at work.
~~
Breath, you invisible poem!
Steady sheer exchange between the cosmos
and our being. Counterpoise
in which I rhythmically become.
Single wave whose
gradual sea I am; sparest
of all possible seas -
winning the universe.
How many regions in space have been
inside me already. Many winds
are like my son.
You, air, still full of places once mine,
do you know me? You once
my words' sphere, leaf, and smooth rind.
-Rilke, translated by Poulin
Karl looks up from the email he's just read, looks out over the people in the street outside the restaurant. It's a small restaurant, family-owned, quiet street, no-one bothers them when they meet here.
What the hell does that mean? he asks himself, looking at the poem again. Sheer steady exchange... hmm. Like breathing? something even finer? like molecules, atoms exchanged between me and the universe?
How Spockian of you, Vig, he emails back. See you tomorrow night.
The waiter arrives as Orli does, seats him, then takes their orders. Nothing fancy, local foods cooked simply; coffee for Karl, tea for Orli. Quiet bustle of food being prepared, plates served, meals eaten, dishes gathered, change made, goodbyes said.
In the end, it's just a moment together. Their ways will part again, no real idea when they'll all be together in the house at the end of the bluff road for any length of time.
But in this hour or two, the world's transformed from one state to another, the sheer steady exchange of love between them leaving everything more finely made than it was a moment before.
~~
Evening
The sky puts on the darkening blue coat
held for it by a row of ancient trees;
you watch: and the lands grow distant in your sight,
one journeying to heaven, one that fails;
and leave you, not at home in either one,
not quite so still and dark as the darkened houses,
not calling to eternity with the passion
of what becomes a star each night, and rises;
and leave you (inexpressibly to unravel)
your life, with its immensity and fear,
so that, now bounded, now immeasurable,
it is alternatively stone in you and star.
-Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by Stephen Mitchell)
He's spent his days riding, working on the ranch. Flying into LAX, disappearing into the ordinary life of men. Working on the next books for Perceval, shouting back at the radio when all of it, the stupidity of the government, the election, the unwilling-to-be-educated public gets to him. He stops then when it gets so frustrating and goes to his old friends, the poets, and finds his way to the middle again, the place between stone and star where with each breath he can transform base rage into elegant hope, and begin again.
Tomorrow, whether he sleeps well tonight or not, he will rise to the new day grateful for this world that asks him to transform it, make it into himself, live in it, and offer it to others to care for, to enjoy. He'll find patience in little things, make peace with what he can and fight for what he believes in, and send poems to his lovers and the world, in the hopes that they are more than just words: that they will be lights that guide along the path to being most humanely human.
[a/n- poems in this chapter found posted at Perceval Press. Thank you, V.]
previously: Local
next: Accepting
slashfairy
~~
And these things, whose lives
are lived in leaving-they understand when you praise them.
Perishing, they turn to us, the most perishable, for help.
They want us to change them completely in our invisible hearts,
oh-forever-into us! Whoever we may finally be.
Earth, isn't this what you want: to resurrect
in us invisibly? Isn't it your dream
to be invisible one day? Earth! Invisible!
What's your urgent charge, if not transformation?
Earth, my love, I will.
-Rilke, translated by Poulin
He clicks close and gets up from the table.
Everything Viggo posts at Perceval these days is about savoring life. About choosing life, about taking responsibility for the gift of living, and living to the fullest.
Joyce, Rilke, Sor Juana, either brought forth from memory, mistakes and all, or typed out by hand from a book pulled off the shelves.
It's an education in itself, keeping up with Viggo, Orlando thinks, closing the laptop, putting in its bag. His smile is wide, eyes are bright. Today he's got a chance for lunch with Karl, first time in ages, and he's full of poetry and Viggo and the energy that comes with being back at work.
~~
Breath, you invisible poem!
Steady sheer exchange between the cosmos
and our being. Counterpoise
in which I rhythmically become.
Single wave whose
gradual sea I am; sparest
of all possible seas -
winning the universe.
How many regions in space have been
inside me already. Many winds
are like my son.
You, air, still full of places once mine,
do you know me? You once
my words' sphere, leaf, and smooth rind.
-Rilke, translated by Poulin
Karl looks up from the email he's just read, looks out over the people in the street outside the restaurant. It's a small restaurant, family-owned, quiet street, no-one bothers them when they meet here.
What the hell does that mean? he asks himself, looking at the poem again. Sheer steady exchange... hmm. Like breathing? something even finer? like molecules, atoms exchanged between me and the universe?
How Spockian of you, Vig, he emails back. See you tomorrow night.
The waiter arrives as Orli does, seats him, then takes their orders. Nothing fancy, local foods cooked simply; coffee for Karl, tea for Orli. Quiet bustle of food being prepared, plates served, meals eaten, dishes gathered, change made, goodbyes said.
In the end, it's just a moment together. Their ways will part again, no real idea when they'll all be together in the house at the end of the bluff road for any length of time.
But in this hour or two, the world's transformed from one state to another, the sheer steady exchange of love between them leaving everything more finely made than it was a moment before.
~~
Evening
The sky puts on the darkening blue coat
held for it by a row of ancient trees;
you watch: and the lands grow distant in your sight,
one journeying to heaven, one that fails;
and leave you, not at home in either one,
not quite so still and dark as the darkened houses,
not calling to eternity with the passion
of what becomes a star each night, and rises;
and leave you (inexpressibly to unravel)
your life, with its immensity and fear,
so that, now bounded, now immeasurable,
it is alternatively stone in you and star.
-Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by Stephen Mitchell)
He's spent his days riding, working on the ranch. Flying into LAX, disappearing into the ordinary life of men. Working on the next books for Perceval, shouting back at the radio when all of it, the stupidity of the government, the election, the unwilling-to-be-educated public gets to him. He stops then when it gets so frustrating and goes to his old friends, the poets, and finds his way to the middle again, the place between stone and star where with each breath he can transform base rage into elegant hope, and begin again.
Tomorrow, whether he sleeps well tonight or not, he will rise to the new day grateful for this world that asks him to transform it, make it into himself, live in it, and offer it to others to care for, to enjoy. He'll find patience in little things, make peace with what he can and fight for what he believes in, and send poems to his lovers and the world, in the hopes that they are more than just words: that they will be lights that guide along the path to being most humanely human.
[a/n- poems in this chapter found posted at Perceval Press. Thank you, V.]
previously: Local
next: Accepting