The Inaccessible Cardinal
Or why Rilke’s poetry is really the math of transfinite numbers
Who hears me howl among
the assassin choirs singing hosanna?
Who if I weep will drink my tears
When the Wrath of God is poured?
What angel would take my prayer
As its prey, my plea grasped as in talons?
The amen held against me,
The massive beat of a huge heart
hymning with the beat of wings.
In the steep climb of the ladder of flight
I would be a shadow in stark relief
A squint of crow’s wing in winter sun.
The loft and implicate dominion
Of wing within wing, suns with suns
The cold I feel in my bones–
is love, the infinite cardinal, the aleph null,
The inaccessible cardinal, the smallest
Infinity, the set of all loves.
Note: This is what you get when I try to parse out Rilke’s Duino Elegies auf Deutsch. If you don’t think poetry is a kind of mathematics, you’re not reading the right poetry. Or the right math.
Dr. Omed's Tent Show Revival 