XVII
WHERE, in what blessedly-watered gardens, on what trees
Out of what tenderly unleaved bloom,
Do the exotic fruits of consolation ripen?
These Delicious fruits, of which perhaps one In the trampled meadow of your poverty, you find.
From time to time you wonder over the fruit,— its size,
Over its soundness, the smoothness of its rind,
And that the thoughtlessness of a bird had not snatched it from you, nor the jealousies
Of the worms below.
Are there then trees to which angels frequently go
And which slow occult gardeners so strangely rear,
That, without belonging to us, for us they bear?
Have we never been able, we, shadow and shade,
Through our behavior,—ripe too soon, too soon fade—
To disturb the composure of that summer-glow?
—Ranier Maria Rilke, “Sonnets to Orpheus”
Sonnets to Orpheus XVII
About Me
Mark Folse is a provincial diarist and aspiring minor poet from New Orleans. His past blogging adventures included the Katina/Federal Flood blog wetbankguide on blogspot.com which David Simon told NY Magazine was one of three blogs that helped inform Treme, and Toulouse Street–Odd Bits of Life in New Orleans, which once outranked the Doobie Brothers on Google Search. His work has appeared in The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Trampoline, Unlikely Stories, Peauxdunque Review, LMNL Anthology, The New Delta Review, Metazen, New Laurel Review, Ellipsis, What We Know: New Orleans as Home, Please Forward, The Maple Leaf Rag IV, and A Howling in the Wires (which he co-edited).
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Well Bottom Blues 
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