From David Pollack's 7 Trees, Ink on Paper, 2018. Requiem for a Friend by Rainer Maria Rilke (In memoriam Paula Modersohn-Becker) I have my dead, and I have let them go, and was amazed to see them so contented, so soon at home in being dead, so cheerful, so unlike their reputation. Only you return; brush past me, loiter, try to knock against something, so that the sound reveals your presence, Oh don’t take from me what I am slowly learning. I’m sure you have gone astray if you are moved to homesickness for something in this dimension. We transform these things; they aren’t real, they are only the reflections upon the polished surface of our being, I thought you were much further on. It troubles me that you should stray back, you, who have achieved more transformation than any other woman. that we were frightened when you died. . .no; rather: that your stern death broke in upon us, darkly, wrenching the till-then from the ever-since...