Here’s some poetry and art about depression, the lows, and trying to live the questions (in the style of Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet.)
The Artwork: Waning
The Poem: Cold & Sharp & Heavy
I am sometimes cold
and sharp and heavy
like the impenetrable mass
of an imploding star
or an unseen winter expanse
of the high desert
at midnight, where unfriendly
conditions do the work of
unburdening themselves
of warmth and life.
When I am this cold
and sharp and heavy
I wonder if it indicates
an equal capacity for
– not quite the opposite,
but, rather –
the spectral range
of texture and temperature,
the serpentine heat
of cycles,
for what goes up
must exist, even on the edge
of an event horizon,
bending what we think
we slightly know
into the unknowable
spiral of time and trust,
leaving us, pirouetting
in space, holding a cold
and sharp and heavy
key
to our eternal question.