Poet and poem...

 

No poet

No poem

But a showering

Of words

Of images 

Of a story

Not here 

Or there..

Spontaneity 

Playing 

With time...

DECEMBER 23

Wait and Gather

Poems don't come to much when they are written too soon. One should wait and gather the feelings and flavors of a whole life, and a long life if possible, and then, just at the end, one might perhaps be able to write ten good lines. For poems are not, as people sup- pose, emotions-those come easily and quickly enough. They are experiences.

For the sake of one line of poetry, one must see many cities, people, and things. One must be acquainted with animals and feel how the birds fly, and know the gestures of small flowers opening at the first light. One must be able to think back on paths taken through unknown places, on unanticipated meetings, and on farewells one had long seen coming, on days of childhood not yet understood; on parents one disappointed when they offered some pleasure one could not grasp (it was a pleasure suited to another); on childhood illnesses that came on so strangely, altering everything; on days in closed and quiet rooms and on mornings by the sea; on the sea itself, on all seas; on night journeys that rose and flew with the stars....

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

~~Rainer Maria Rilke