Poet, Lost

There are few things in life more distressing than a lost book.

I am not exaggerating.

Tonight, taking the advice of cousin Jef, I scoured my bookshelves looking for Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet. Jef suggested that it might give solace to my loneliness and resolve to my doubting and weary heart--also not exaggerating--so, I went in search of it, to no avail.

The longer I looked, the more the text came back to me, lines that I love, wisdom that I savor, strings of words that I like to hold in my hands and turn in the light looking for all the new ways that my life is reflected in them. This lost book  is like a lost friend, a dearly anticipated  and much treasured companion who refused to show in a crucial moment of need.

I feel deserted.

I feel aimless.

I looked for a substitution among my stacks, another well-loved text whose prose could anchor me to this earth and soothe my anxieties. Finding, none, I sat down to write. I hoped in vain that my own words could satisfy the need I have for this one particular work. In literature and in life sometimes you have to be your own muse and your own dearest companion.

Tonight, I need Rilke.

Comments

[Jef]

"I believe that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension that we find paralyzing because we no longer hear our surprised feelings living. Because we are alone with the alien thing that has entered into our self; because everything intimate and accustomed is for an instant taken away; because we stand in the middle of a transition where we cannot remain standing."
-Rainer Maria Rilke