I resurrected the 100 Themes challenge this past year, and for the most part I’ve been sitting on the new poems instead of sharing them. They just didn’t seem “good enough” to be shared. While sifting through the collection today, however, I noticed one that I rather liked. It was based on the 28th prompt:
SORROW
Well, given that I faced this prompt during the summer of 2020, there was quite a bit of material to choose from in the world around me. But I wanted something that felt like my sorrow, not something observed in others or something that I thought I ought to feel.
So I mulled over it. As I was sitting outside on the porch, one line came to me: “I painted the sky…” It was quite possible I had literally been painting a sky at the time, but I don’t remember.
Anyway, the memory of a recent painful incident followed on its heels, and as I wrote, Rilke’s voice slipped in. I had been reading a bilingual copy of The Book of Hours, and I thought for some reason of the poem labeled “I, 52” in Barrows and Macy’s translation:
Mein Leben hat das gleiche Kleid und Haar
wie aller alten Zaren Sterbestunde.
Die Macht entfremdete nur meinem Munde,
doch meine Reiche, die ich schweigend runde,
versammeln sich in meinem Hintergrunde
und meine Sinne sind noch Gossudar.Für sie ist beten immer noch: erbauen,
aus allen Maßen bauen, daß das Grauen
fast wie die Größe wird und schön, –
und: jedes Hinknien und Vertrauen
(daß es die andern nicht beschauen)
mit vielen goldenen und blauen
und bunten Kuppeln überhöhn.Denn was sind Kirchen und sind Klöster
in ihrem Steigen und Erstehn
als Harfen, tönende Vertröster,
durch die die Hände Halberlöster
vor Königen und Jungfraun gehn.
The part I formatted in bold text translates roughly (emphasis on roughly) as: “for them [tsars], to pray is always to build … so that what is terrifying becomes almost like grandeur, almost beautiful; and let our kneeling and trusting be overarched by many gold and blue and multi-colored cupolas so that others don’t see it.” I particularly liked the following lines in Barrows and Macy’s interpretation: “so that others do not see our fear, / let every kneeling and every pious gesture / be overarched with splendor.”
In my mind it blended with another poem in the collection, labeled as I, 4:
Wir dürfen dich nicht eigenmächtig malen,
du Dämmernde, aus der der Morgen stieg.
Wir holen aus den alten Farbenschalen
die gleichen Striche und die gleichen Strahlen,
mit denen dich der Heilige verschwieg.Wir bauen Bilder vor dir auf wie Wände;
so daß schon tausend Mauern um dich stehn.
Denn dich verhüllen unsre frommen Hände,
sooft dich unsre Herzen offen sehn.
Again, roughly: “We build images in front of you like walls, until thousands of walls stand around you. For our pious hands hide you whenever our hearts see you openly.”
I was fascinated by the idea of hiding our vulnerability behind beauty — whether that vulnerability is fear or longing or sorrow. I thought about how I both hide and reveal my deepest feelings in poems and paintings. I also thought about how I, and so many others, put on a brave and cheery face when we’re hurting deeply.
So much for the origins of the poem. I also made an intuitive decision to write with rhyme and meter, although I didn’t define it before I began; I just let the words sing according to what felt right. And for some reason, a singsong tone felt right. I supposed I wanted it to offset the pain in the words.
Anyway, here is my little poem, who almost doesn’t want to appear after such a grandiose introduction as that. She feels a little like an impostor. But I think she deserves a little push onto the stage:
I Painted the Sky
I painted the sky
when you left me that day.
I painted it gold and blue.
Like cupolas hiding my prayer from myself,
it sheltered my holiest wounds.
It made me feel brave
with a layer of paint
to color my towers of grief;
but when the bell tolls
and the incense unfolds
I don’t know how I will live.
