Rilke Renditions: II
By Chris Edwards
Unfasten my chain, Madam, I’m going to heave
us damsels into a little Gluck ditty. Now, lately it seems quite clear
from your glance that this Schloss you say you’re taking me to
is … Oh, Bête Noire, you mean
we’re being shipped to MIR? How smug. It’s always an eerie
shaft I hear you could die booming in, so let’s take notes
on the ditch it floats in — jet-black, studded with afflatus —
there and here, a few self-startlers, little wonderers of the world,
the usual stuff — the sin-engendering god and his dozen
volunteers. They dance all night in a big hut girt by the earnest
tinkle of a Steinway. Say, do you sissies understand
what a Toad is? Well, with links like these you’d have Motive.
As for that Big Stink we approach — again? — it’s Lies they tell me
to fix myself fast to … We’re here, Madam. My chain …