Not my love for Rilke nor the elegaic beauty of this poem persuade me that unrequited love is worth one second of a human life. 

 

Rilke is speaking of a particular kind of unrequited love because the poet does not know his Beloved. 

 

And so I take it that this poem may really be an expression of the poet’s love for the world which does not know us as individuals looking for love.

 

 

 

Night Journey, 1969-70, oil on canvas

Frank Bowling, British born Guyana born 1934.  Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

 

 

So vast is the world.  We cannot experience all of her and we grasp so few of her processes. And we cannot but love her and long for interaction with her.

 

 

Night Journey

 

 

 

 

You Who Never Arrived

Rainer Maria Rilke, 1875-1926, Austrian

Translated by Stephen Mitchell

 

 

 

You who never arrived
in my arms, Beloved, who were lost
from the start,

 

Dan Johnson’s Surprise, 1969, acrylic on canvas

Frank Bowling, British born Guyana born 1934.  Whitney Museum of Art, NY

I don’t even know what songs
would please you.

 

 

Detail of Dan Johnson’s Surprise

 

 

I have given up trying
to recognize you in the surging wave of
the next moment. All the immense
images in me — the far-off, deeply-felt
landscape, cities, towers, and bridges, and
unsuspected turns in the path,

 

 

Bartica Born, 1968, acrylic paint on canvas, and detail.

Frank Bowling, British born Guyana 1934.  Private collection on loan to Brooklyn Museum in 2018/19

 

 

and those powerful lands that were once
pulsing with the life of the gods–

 

Detail of Bartica Born, 1968

 

all rise within me to mean
you, who forever elude me.

 

 

 

Travelling with Robert Hughes, 1969-1970, acrylic on canvas.

Frank Bowling, British born Guyana, 1934.  The Joyner/Giuffrida Collection on exhibit at the Baltimore Museum in 2019

 

 

You, Beloved, who are all
the gardens I have ever gazed at,
longing. An open window
in a country house– , and you almost
stepped out, pensive, to meet me.

 

Detail of Texas Louise, below

 

 

Streets that I chanced upon,–
you had just walked down them and vanished.
And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors
were still dizzy with your presence and,
startled, gave back my too-sudden image.

 

 

 

Texas Louise, 1971, acrylic paint on canvas, and details.

Frank Bowling, British born  Guyana 1934.  Private collection on loan to Brooklyn Museum in 2018/19

 

 

Who knows? Perhaps the same
bird echoed through both of us
yesterday, separate, in the evening.