UNKNOWN WEAVER, French
Sight
c. 1500
Wool and silk, 300 x 303 cm
Musée de Cluny, Paris

IV  The Sonnets To Orpheus

Oh this beast is the one that never was.

They didn’t know that; unconcerned, they had

loved its grace, its walk, and how it stood

looking at them calmly, with clear eyes.

It hadn’t been. But for their love, a pure

beast arose. They always left it room.

And in that heart-space, radiant and bare,

it raised its head and hardly needed to

exist. They fed it, not with any grain,

but always just with the thought that it might be.

And this assurance gave the beast so much power,

it grew a horn upon its brow. One horn.

Afterward it approached a virgin, whitely —

and was, inside the mirror and in her.

— Rilke/Trans. Mitchell