Gather around, for it's very cold

© Duru Güngör, ink on rice paper

Here is how Rilke spins a tale, as if in passing, barely noticing the blast and the crater left by his handful of lines:

It was already growing dark, and nothing had been heard of the Duke. The news that he had disappeared had had time to spread during the long winter evening. And wherever it spread, it produced in everyone a sudden, exaggerated certainty that he was still alive. Never perhaps had the Duke been so real in every imagination as on that night. There was no house where people weren't sitting up and waiting for him and imagining his knock on their door. And if he didn't come, it was because he had already gone by.

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(From The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, trans. Mitchell, p. 194)