If Toward Rilke Doug Bolling Doug Bolling Page 1   Rilke almost there in light straining against the mist. I held the Elegies closely like a testament bound hard to keep safe the secrets. I memorized whole pages at a time and dared tell no one. That day I fell in the rain-slicked street and my hand raged against stone as the slender prize lost itself in water. That day I walked for hours after as sun hove from the clouds and made day again for the solitaries resuming their routines, mere mockery of restoration. But those songs of death and love now muddied, warped, suddenly signposts only of ink washed away, those perfect words, perfect sounds that took soul and granted it the dark wood but gave no answers, only the passage itself. I was young then, barely in college and woolly eyed from lectures and math problems and the riddling face of the moon.