rilke

154d

This is the animal that never was.
Not knowing that, they loved it anyway:
its bearing, its stride, its high, clear whinny—
right down to the still light of its gaze…

—Don Paterson, “Unicorn”
after Rilke’s “Die Sonette an Orpheus”
published in POETRY, June 2004

Today, 9 April, is National Unicorn Day! 🦄

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?volume=184&issue=3&page=73

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #NationalUnicornDay #unicorn #Rilke

Unicorn
by Don Paterson
after Rilke’s “Die Sonette an Orpheus”

This is the animal that never was.
Not knowing that, they loved it anyway:
its bearing, its stride, its high, clear whinny-
right down to the still light of its gaze.

It never was. And yet such was their love
the pure beast arose; they had cleared the space.
And in the stable of its nothingness
it shook its white mane out and stamped its hoof.

They fed it, then, not with hay or corn,
but with the chance that it might come to pass.
All this gave the creature such a power

its brow put out a horn; one single horn.
It grew inside a maiden’s looking-glass
then one day walked out, and passed into her.

ALT

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original