Early successes, Creation’s favourite ones,
mountain-chains, ridges reddened by dawns
of all origin – pollen of flowering godhead,
junctions of light, corridors, stairs, thrones,
spaces of being, shields of bliss, tempests
of storm-filled, delighted feeling and, suddenly, solitary
mirrors: gathering their own out-streamed beauty
back into their faces again.[1]

Does, at least sometimes, the uneasy thought occur to you, when full of faith in the meaningfulness of the authorial effort you are creating (furtively hoping to achieve a Work, to the glory of God, Universe, Art, Mankind, your Client or just Yourself), that you’re eccentric, somewhat like the decadent Rilke who daydreams in these verses about ‘early successes’? When fulfilled with the ‘tempests of storm-filled, delighted feeling’ you create your ‘ridges reddened by dawns of all origin’, do you withdraw from the world?