Katie Marquette: I remember as a child being afraid of the dark. Katie Marquette: I think of this poem now, rocking the baby. Included in his collection Sonnets to Orpheus II, 29 is the poem “Let this Darkness be a Bell Tower.”Īs you ring, what batters you becomes your strength Darkness was a frequent theme in his work. Katie Marquette: These poems aren’t the only ones in which Rilke meditates on the night. This is art that was created at - and for - the night. These poems were written in his own hand in Paris of 1913 and given to fellow writer Rudolf Kassner as a gift. They seem like a special gift to me, a new mother in the trenches of sleep deprivation, forging a new and intimate relationship with the night. Katie Marquette: In March 2021, just a few weeks before my daughter was born, the German-language poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s Poems to Night were published in English for the first time. Who will this baby be? At night, in the dark, anything seems possible. It is in these middle-of-the-night nursing sessions - dream feedings, they’re called - that the night feels very palpable to me, a place for big questions. Although she doesn’t fully wake up, I will hear her rustling in the dark around 3 a.m., searching for me, her mother, the place and home she knows best. I rock this ever-growing, ever-changing child in my arms, nursing her to sleep. The sound of artificial rain and far-off thunder echoes and booms in our dimly lit room. It is our baby daughter’s favorite track on the white noise machine. Katie Marquette: Every night, there is a thunderstorm. The Big Ponder - The Night (PDF, 442 kB).
0 kommentar(er)
