Reply to Rilke

by Miles Raymer

Rilke Letters

My Dear and Honoured Rilke,
I have received your letters
We all did––
Joyce’s “general postoffice of human life” was
Not too late
After all

Your letters, first posted
Then unposted––
Wash us clean across the generations
Bring us the quiet and careful wisdom
You sought in
Solitude

Criticism won’t bring us near to art
You tell us––
Yet it can be “one of your best workmen
If you train it”
I have trained it
I have tried, anyway
Still, I offer none

Confronting the unutterable, then
Perhaps––
Will take us inward
To glimpse the truth and time
And tenderness you gifted
To a young man
Us to all

In God you found Man
And in Man God––
“The final fruit of a tree
Whose leaves we are”
This future God is
The first ever
I could accept

These verses feel poor payment
As if a debt is owed––
Such artful economics brim
With failure
Yet this mode of tribute, somehow
Must be enough
For me if not
For you

I will now back to my abyss
Yet never––
Forgetting “those old myths”
To which you now
Belong
I hope your final solitude
Is full