First Elegy, Duino Elegies, Rainer Maria Rilke

"Oh, and there's Night, there's Night, when wind full of cosmic space
feeds on our faces: for whom would she not remain, longed for, mild disenchantress,
painfully there for the lonely heart to achieve?
Is she lighter for lovers?
Alas, with each other they only conceal their lot!
Don't you know yet?-Fling the emptiness out of your arms
into the spaces we breathe-maybe that the birds
will feel the extended air in more intimate flight."

Yes, the Springs had need of you. Many a star
was waiting for you to espy it. Many a wave
would rise on the past towards you; or, else, perhaps
as you went by an open window, a violin
would be giving itself to someone. All this was a trust.
But were you equal to it? Were you not always
distracted by expectation, as though all this
were announcing someone to love?
(As if you could hope to conceal her,
with all those great strange thoughts
going in and out and often staying overnight!)"

"Strange not to go on wishing one's wishes. Strange,
to see all that was once relation so loosely fluttering
hither and thither in space. And it's hard, being dead,
and full of retrieving before one begins to espy
a trace of eternity-"

~ First Elegy recited by Alan, June 1994

1996 Alan, Gilly and Brecht

'One Art' from Geography II, 1976, by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.


--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.




From The Complete Poems 1927-1979 by Elizabeth Bishop, published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc. Copyright © 1979, 1983 by Alice Helen Methfessel.

The Mariner's Star by Candida Clark

....Beyond this just a shell of infinite beauty oystered all around.

Sea Voyage around the ancient Greek and Roman sites of the western mediterranean, 1995.