Between the Pages of Letters to A Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke V

“No, there is not more beauty here than in other places, and all these objects, which have been marveled at by generation after generation, mended and restored by the hands of workmen, mean nothing, are nothing, and have no heart and no value;––but there is much beauty here, because everywhere there is much beauty.” (Rainer Maria Rilke. Letters to a Young Poet . Trans. Stephen Mitchell. NY: Modern Library, 2001, p. 47) Sleep doesn’t come like she used to. And not only do I know better to not be bitter, I feel no bitterness towards her. I sense I am afraid. Of what I know not of. But I am mocked by my mind of the merry jokes I once made of how well I slept, no less than the really-really dead. And I feel I have a new friend, an imaginary one actually––but what is not imaginary? My new friend is Chaucer’s speaker from the Book of the Duchess . My dear friend begun his tale with such melancholic lines, which I feel a strong urge to perform (to no audience except self) amidst treme