Work of the eyes is done, now

                        go and do heart–work

                        on all the images imprisoned within you . . .

                                               

                                                            ––Rainer Maria Rilke

 

 

Having reached the clandestine park

where all the birds unpearl their feathery necks,

having absorbed the last images of her: porcelain

head unsteady on spindly frame, then

swollen and dying

 

Now do heart work:

Take down the angry pose––the nervous

lip–biting, pacing inside the small room of want––

to find a self pinched back

imprisoned still by images

not fully risen to the surface.

 

In the photographer's studio, so much is soaking

in the hearty red fluid light

I'm having trouble getting back into the room

without tears to turn the handle,

pull the darks out of the lights

and greys: to look her image back

into its separate gloss, not glaze

over and become its mirror.

 

The work of separate selves continues: mine beneath

fan–blades that flick the breeze like lines

of verse to cool the heart; hers beneath

the earth, outside of time to mark its

boundaries, the silence that encases

all these calls.

 

 

(“Heart Work” from HEART WORK, by Sharon Dolin © 1995.

With permission of the publisher, The Sheep Meadow Press, all rights reserved.)