As Tine Fell Asleep, There Rose a Tree

As Tine lay comfortably in bed tonight, with her hot water bottle nestled beside her, she leafed through a book of poetry she'd found in a pile of books on the floor.

It was called "Sonnets to Orpheus," and Tine was interested in it because she thought it might have something to do with her walk today. "I think Orpheus went to the underworld, too," she thought. "I was there today and we can compare notes."

Tine likes to reflect on her walks before she falls asleep at night. It makes for a restful night.

"I'll start with the introduction," Tine thought, and she read about how Orpheus might have brought his beloved Eurydice back from the underworld with him if only he hadn't turned to look back at her before he entered the world of the living.

"Rubob was in too much of a hurry to get out of the graveyard today to look back at me," Tine thought. "It's just as well. I might have had to live there for an eternity in that little stone house without the chimney."

"What are you reading, Tine?" Rubob said, looking up from a weighty volume that seemed to make him very sleepy.

"A poem, Orpheus," Tine said.

"Orpheus, Tine?"

"You led me out of the world of the dead with your lantern, Rubob," Tine said. "Did Orpheus carry a lantern?"

"I don't know, Tine," Rubob replied. "What poem?"

"I'll read it to you, Rubob. It's about a tree," Tine said. "It's by Rainer Maria Rilke."



"There rose a tree. O pure transcendency!
O Orpheus singing! O tall tree in the ear!
And all was silent. Yet even in the silence
new beginning, beckoning, change went on.

"Creatures of stillness thronged out of the clear
released wood from lair and nesting-place;
and it turned out that not from cunning and not
from fear were they so hushed within themselves,

"but from harkening. Bellow and cry and roar
seemed little in their hearts. And where before
hardly a hut had been to take this in,

"a covert out of darkest longing
with an entrance way whose timbers tremble,--
you built temples for them in their hearing."

"I wonder what it means, Rubob," Tine said.

But she'd turned over on her side and shut her eyes before Rubob could reply. Perhaps he didn't have a ready reply.