Friday the 13th
is considered inauspicious by a lot of people. Those people are most likely
also the ones who steer clear of black cats, broken mirrors and spilt salt.
That black cat one is
weird. In many places, a black cat is considered a harbinger of good luck. (In
England, weddings often include an appearance by a chimney sweep with a black
cat on his shoulder, to ensure a happy marriage. I honestly don’t know about
cats of any color riding around on anyone’s shoulder in a crowd of people
hitting the champagne, but it’s definitely A Thing.) But in large swathes of
Western Europe and the United States, black cats have a hard life. They’re
often the first to be abandoned and the last to be adopted.
I don’t think I’ve done
a poem by the Austrian-Czech poet Rainer Maria Rilke before. He’s quite
fascinating, because he was basically in love with all the arts—sculpture,
painting, music, writing; they all shaped his sensibilities. He traveled and
lived all over Europe, soaking up what each community had to offer and adding
the influences to his writing. He also had passionate relationships with a
number of women of all ages, and managed to maintain good relationships with
most of them.
So for Friday the 13th,
let’s have Rilke’s “Black Cat”, whose beautiful fur absorbs all than a human
can project, and in whose eyes turn us all into specks.
“Black Cat”
A ghost, though invisible, still is
like a place
your sight can knock on, echoing;
but here
within this thick black pelt, your
strongest gaze
will be absorbed and utterly
disappear:
just as a raving madman, when
nothing else
can ease him, charges into his dark
night
howling, pounds on the padded wall,
and feels
the rage being taken in and
pacified.
She seems to hide all looks that
have ever fallen
into her, so that, like an audience,
she can look them over, menacing and
sullen,
and curl to sleep with them. But all
at once
as if awakened, she turns her face
to yours;
and with a shock, you see yourself,
tiny,
inside the golden amber of her eyeballs
suspended, like a prehistoric fly.
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