The sleepers, oh, so many sleepers ...
They lie on rush mats in their hot
stick hut. The man and woman
want to love wildly, noisily.
Instead, they are quiet and efficient
in the dark. Bangles ring
as his mother stirs in her sleep.
Who can say what will come of
the quickening and slowing
of their breaths on each others'
necks, of their deep shudders?
Another sleeper, a
gift
of God,
ribs and shoulders to be clothed
in flesh .. .
In the dusty garden the water
she carried from the well in a jug
balanced on her black hair
stares back at the moon
from its cool terra-cotta urn.
DEBORA GREGER
Rilke in the Middle Ages
In that age the body, which was cultivated like a piece
of
land,
tended cartfully like a harvest, and which one owned as one
owns a valuable property, was the thing looked upon .
.. .
He felt too much, as usual.
The woman woven into the tapestry
unwrapped anecklace, lifting it
on its cloth, no sacrament,
to show her worth as wife to the beholder.
The family lion held a tent flap open,
as did the unicorn she'd tamed
to prove she was still virginal.
-Rainer Maria Rilke
