Paschal Moon: pacified rage

Friday the 13^th 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 13^th, 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.