Rilke's "The Panther", and Embarrassment

The other night Koosman (oops, Koosmann) recited this Rilke poem to me in German. After she had me good and mesmerized, we sat quiet a moment, and then she translated it for me. Tears swelled, and I let them. (I know this poem of course, but had I heard it before?) I paste it here, to connect to another topic on my mind lately, later in this post.

The Panther

His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars, and behind the bars, no world.

As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tense, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.

* * *

I read it and read it over. Still it gives me an urge to weep. I don't of course. I am too busy to weep. To weep is embarrassing.

Another poet friend of mine, Arpine, said to me the other day over coffee..."It is embarrassing to wait for Godot." I laughed outloud, but it wasn't exactly because it was funny. We had gone to see the Rogue Theatre's production of Jean Genet's The Maids a few nights before, and were still processing our enjoyment of it--how painful it was. How we loved the painfulness, and how silly, ultimately, we felt we were. We sometimes get so excited we look at each other and want to cry through our stiff smiles. Somehow, this led to a conversation about how difficult it was to articulate to another such sensitive type feelings of heartbrokeness. How we were kind of waiting for Godot together when we met to play our poet roles together. On our "poetry dates".

We were discussing presence. Presence with friends, with each other, and being lucid and available. To do so often necessarily leads to embarrassment. To be in public with another. To be public with them. You can not remain private and truly be with another. You can, however, pace in a cage in broad daylight in great crowds of others (I came to think of this after Koosmann recited the poem above to me later.) Arpine also said, "There is an embarrassment that we need to feel in order to connect." This resonated with me, and still does. This led to us talking about the ways in which we buffer ourselves from that embarrassment, like drinking, or taking drugs, or distracting ourselves in other ways. I touched the wall and told her, I know this is here. But I also know it is dimensional in ways the sober eye is often too lazy to see. I like seeing the other ways in which this wall is here, I said. She asked me, why? Why do you want to see it any other way than the way it is? I want to feel the pain of it, she said. She meant, the way it is, most obviously a wall, most accessibly, most physically and visibly--is painful.

Another poet I know, but haven't asked permission to reveal (so I won't lest I embarrass him) talked about that "feeling" phenomenon months ago. He wrote: "The answer is not in language, it is in numbers: do you feel? If yes, then, in all communities, rise up and say: I feel. If you do not feel, if you feel nothing, then lay your apathy down for those that feel. This is not the time for standing aside (I know and feel this)."

The idea of embarrassment is a truly remarkable one. To be embarrassed is an act of love, albeit backwardly so. It is, really, because of love that we bother in the first place to feel it. Shame is another, but not the same, and still fear and regret, and there are others.

My gaze is stuck on child's naked ankle as her parents hug goodbye above her; how do I know they did not look each other in the eye?

Someone said, it is all a just a chase for wind. My friend Arpine says so agreeably, "Yes, but where did the wind come from?"

Recently, I have not felt like writing much. It is cold in the desert and I can't move as fluidly as I would if it were warmer. If I can't move in the world, I am sitting still too long. While sitting still, I lose substantial quantities of proprioception (a lovely new word I learned from another poet friend at another poetry date over coffee a couple days ago -from Latin proprius, meaning "one's own" and perception). It means, as she explained it, if you hold a spoon in your hand long enough, you will feel it as if it is an extension of your hand, and know without looking where it is in space. This desk then, by now is like an extra belly, and this window I sit by--another eye.

Instead I am reading books and browsing dictionaries, and visiting indoors with friends. Working, of course, and there is a lot of work to do. This is my 39th year of life, and I seem too tired for my age. I am too young to be this tired. It's embarrassing. All these things are related, and I feel them, but I don't know what they are...