We of the German nation so new to be a nation

so new to be a self

How often did f hear that pompous introduction?

We of the German nation light rose through the sky

like a swarm of flies

As often as I heard ‘transcendent’ or read the word ‘pure’ in their works of philosophy?

I gave up poetry for history in my youth. I gave up smoking; changed handwriting; traded stamps which I’d collected in my childhood for tables of mature statistics; seldom drank; was torn between the ethics of the Stoics and the ethics of Immanuel Kant; no longer moved to music; wrote out rules for my behavior and rigorously kept them, assigning grades; thought abstract thoughts and shrank from women; cultivated bibliographies in paper pots; lived in a house of heavy books. What led me once toward Germany—Hölderlin and Rilke—remained pure imagery. Hölderlin went mad. Rilke’s blood decayed. I gave up youth.

Umkehr

sicher for safe and sicher for certain sich eingraben

wirken

German = now it is our turn. Deutschheit emergierend Heil! Heil

hellen Heller hellig Helligen Helligkeit hellios

If I do not write these absurd German words in that thorny German script, they sink into my English and lie hidden like a lot of lot of leucocytes poor Rilke unlidded, petaled finally epistles to the Fraus of princes, counts, and barons, those endlessly lettered and hyphenated ladies with their suitable chalets and villas, châteaus, castles, lodges, cottages, estates . . . and the engraved calling cards of the well-titled muses:

The calling cards which snowed the silver trays of the socially fortunate

I cherish the memory of your castle rooms, the walks in the gardens, the charming view, the space I Flew through when I flew out to my muse.

How often have I heard that pompous introduction?

Frau Gertrude Ouckama Knoop, Fräulein Imma von Ehrenfels, Ilsa Blumenthal-Weiss, Frau Amman-Volkert, Frau L. Tonier-Funder, Ruth Sieber-Rilke, Ellen Key, Helene von Nostitz, Ellen Delp,

Did these women live and grow in him? Were they his blood, or his disease?

You could say, I suppose, that I died at an early age. But it is literature to say so, only emblematic; the idea’s faded—frayed and dented like a decorated pillow.

But why should a rose be so remembered? Dandelions gray before they shatter; suit the life they stand for. Isn’t emblem all there is to any flower?

I begged to have the Countess to myself. We climbed the Mount Solaro.

Freifrau Anna Münchhausen, Anni Mewes, Lili Schalk, Rosa Schobloch, Ilse Erdmann, Clara Rilke, Mimi Romanelli,

I hear every noise in my body, and I live among squabblers.

we climbed

The heaviness of the hangings—I remember them.

Ausgeseizt auf den Bergen des Herzens. Rilke deprived himself of everything but solitude and poetry.

In a state of Nature, Mad Meg said if you and I are throttling one another, at least we have our reasons; there’s nothing artificial about our fears; and then we have that terrible tension in our tentacles, eh?