Maryana's Reviews > Sonnets to Orpheus

There is this cemetery I used to go for a walk. It never felt like a cemetery, but a huge park full of tall trees and bizarre and beautiful sculptures and lazy cats. One day I came back there with a friend and accidentally we crashed into a funeral. A hearse, a woman crying, my friend saying that we better go, we better go, but he was too cold to feel any of that. I just felt guilty to be there, to be here, to be alive. I still wash my hands compulsively as to remove the scent of a candle and the hint of death.

Ironically enough on the same day I picked up this book in a library and even more ironically my grandfather died a few days after. Reading these poems was really precious to me.

The story behind this set of poems is rather simple, but at the same time incredible one. I think the death of Rilke’s young acquaintance was a trigger to express on paper so much of his thoughts, feelings, emotions and life events… It feels really genuine the possibility of presence, absence and presence after the absence.