NUDE
A pile of shed garments on the hardwood floor rising in layers of ever thinner firmament, from denim to lightest cotton to breath- less silk & a trickle of sunlight spilling through a crack in the curtains. While the prim unwrinkled bed, the generic night- stand pinned under a thick phone book & the blank TV atop a chest of drawers all resist engagement: nothing to capture the enchanted gaze or even the bemused appraisal. No stage hand could stand such inattention to properties, such utter abandon as this room’s lone occupant displays.
*Rainer Maria Rilke, The Book of Images. Translated by Edward Snow (bilingual edition), North Point Press, 1991. (The original, Das Buch der Bilder, was published in 1902 and greatly expanded in 1906. Rilke was one of the 20th century’s three or four greatest poets, and Snow is without a doubt his greatest translator.)