“Every angel is terrifying,” said
Rilke, and I love those words,
and I long have agreed.
I have them tattooed, you see,
across my back
right where wings would be.
I thought a long while
about the language I should use
for this — English, or original German —
and settled for English, so that no one
at the beach or gym
with All American monolingual ignorance
will ever assume
that based on the look of the words,
I must be a Nazi — instead,
they’ll maybe think I’m a lapsed Catholic
or troubled Christian of another sort,
with a blue-black charm across my skin
to fend off the possibility
that I might be terrible too, someday.
I’m certain most will still not understand.
How is it possible, most will say,
that what God created for His comfort
and support could scare anyone?
Isn’t it supposed to be lovely in Heaven, isn’t it
peace beyond understanding
expressed as real estate?
And I’ll laugh, and say that
it’s ‘personal,’ and at any rate
I’ve only ever seen the words on me
backwards in a mirror, so maybe
that way it means something else?
And they will move away from me,
which is all I’ve ever wanted.
Every angel is terrifying, even one
without wings, even one waiting
to return home. I must keep the people
away from me, I cannot be responsible
if they discern the truth and begin to scream.
Dark Matter 
June 19th, 2013 at 6:47 pm
Rilke is a poet who values questions over answers; who abhorred critics who failed to engage with the sensuality of poetry and the actual experience of reading it (rather than just talking about it). Rilke is a poet who speaks often and intimately to God – while also doubting God (and especially the “God” of pious or dogmatic thinking). Rilke has been described as a modern mystic but I think that’s far too simple. Some of his insights and some of his poetry are mystical, especially in their confidence that we can and perhaps must seek a direct rather than mediated relationship with the transcendent. In another of his poems he declares confidently, “There is only one Poet…”, alerting us to the influences of this [divine] “Poet” on a mind open to its power. Yet no simple description truthfully fits Rilke. In his consideration of others, in his devotion to any practice other than art, he would have made no claim at all to mysticism; nor would he want that to be claimed on his behalf.