Surviving the Parting

Tasting the Apple, Oil on Canvas, 40×30 2009 Private Collection

Sonnets to Orpheus, Part 1, 13 Ripe apple, blackberry and banana, nectarine….These all speak death and life into the mouth…I feel…Read it in the features of a child who’s tasting them. This comes from far. Does all grow slowly nameless in your mouth? Where words once were, discoveries flow, set free from the fruit’s flesh, amazed. Dare to say what you call “apple.” This sweetness that first condenses, thickens, and then, finely sublimed in the taste, grows clear, awake, transparent, double-sided, sunny, earthly, native–” O knowing, feeling, happiness–immense!

Rainer Maria Rilke