pain
by richard hacken

---

Hacken Main Page > Poetry Index > 1970s > pain  

---

pain


rilke asked
who
among the order of angels
would hear him
if he screamed.
yet rilke's shriek
must count among
a canon of holy sound:
voices of that full trinity
of aramaic/czech/austro-hungarian
pain:
christ - kafka - rilke...

i on the other mouth
scream until my alveoli
shrivel,
and should any
from the lowest order
of angels
be listening,
that angel would no doubt dismiss
it as middle-class misery:
"how shallow such pain;
when will he learn
to suffer properly?"

        - r. hacken

---

Hacken Main Page > Poetry Index > 1970s > pain  

---