Answering Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus

Sadness of all life, life of all sadness —

pouring death into fourteen lines,

you poured it well, smooth and steady,

twisting just so to catch the drip.

But I pity your ecstatic butterfly —

clutched in the grip of some poetic hiccough,

arrested flutter of the diaphragm.

I pity your fountain...