On Asphalt and Satin
Sei allem Abschied voran, als wäre er hinter dir, wie der Winter, der eben geht. Be ahead of every leave-taking as if it were behind you, like the just-departing winter. Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus II, XIII I live in Berlin and study in Oxford. Every time I come back to Oxford, it
‘And So, My Brother, Hail, and Farewell!’
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime, Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer. — ‘Lycidas’, Milton One April afternoon in 2020, during the sudden lull of lockdown, I placed a shoebox on my sun-flooded desk. I lifted outa photograph of myself as a toddler, bright-eyed against a dull
