September 13, 2011

Memory Is Not Enough

Black Sea with Moon, Nurse with Baby

To Lou Andreas-Salomé, Duino, late autumn, 1911

Memory is not enough...
I do not recollect. What I am
is alive in me because of you. I do not reinvent you
at sadly cooled-off places you have left behind.
Even your absence is filled
with your warmth and is more real
than your not-existing. Longing often meanders
into vagueness. Why should I throw myself away
when something in you may be
touching me, very lightly, like moonlight
on a window seat.

Uncollected Poems

3 comments:

  1. i absolutely love this and it makes perfect sense to me. i live it
    absence over non existing. allowing it to be moonlight on a car seat and that to be enough.
    ive never seen the moonlight on a carseat used before and i highly approve. i shant forget the feeling that came with the image
    rick

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  2. So true, we don't simply dispose memory of someone who somehow touch the very soft and unseen spot in our heart... no matter how destructive the relationship or bitter the farewell goodbye.

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  3. I've often felt that the images we nurture in our deepest consciousness are much more real than physically present selves. I also feel that the vague sadness that haunts us throughout our lives is because we are unable to reach that perfect alignment of the two

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"Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night."

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Go ahead, bloom recklessly!