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October 23, 2007
entrance
Nathan Kernan, a poet who collaborated with Joan Mitchell on a portfolio of her prints she made at the end of her life, has recounted an episode, shortly before she died, when she asked him to select poems to read at a friend’s funeral. When he read Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Entrance” to her, she said, “Save that one for me.” So he did, for her memorial.
With your eyes, which in their weariness
Barely free themselves from the worn-out threshold,
You lift very slowly one black tree
And place it against the sky: slender, alone.
And you have made the world. And it is huge
And like a word which grows ripe in silence.
And as your will seizes on its meaning,
Tenderly your eyes let it go.
Michael Kimmelman - The Accidental Masterpiece
Posted by amin at October 23, 2007 1:10 PM