The Sphinx

‘I sat before you in the dusk like Rilke before the Sphinx and waited. For what? Some revelation? But I didn’t receive any revelation, did I? No owl brushed its wing against your cheek. You remained beyond indifference, beyond laughter: absent beyond absence. I pulled off a piece of myself, a handful of earth and stone, and threw it at you. I sat down where my body was and waited in the night. But for what?’