AT RILKE’S GRAVE

You roses, pure contradiction, your

big silent petals suddenly shut.

Wrapped as ever in your centripetal thoughts

I linger at the pistils’ taste, my wings shorn.

Death’s own buds, you beckon

to press close, face the gravemound

of decay, where sunrise won’t illuminate

that faint rose graven on the stone,

and you demand even more explanation.

What’s life’s poetry, poetry’s life?

A bell tolls on a distant mountain,

where the church of your avowals rings its own

as if one note, meeting yet apart

across the air. In my heart, I keep your nectar,

sometimes don a shroud.