The title of this piece was inspired by the book Last Living Words: The Ingeborg Bachmann Reader translated from the German by Lillian M. Friedberg. This is actually my response to one of Bachmann's poems, "You Words". I wanted to depict the same basic imagery of the poet shepherding her words and setting them free; but I wanted to convey a sense of harmony, tranquility, and a sort of artistic serendipity, rather than the onerous feeling of obligation, monotony, and artistic disenchantment that seems apparent in the poem. I was encouraged to pursue this alternate viewpoint by a quotation at the end of the book: "she laughed as she remembered Ingeborg's laugh, and you could see how beautiful Ingeborg had been." (Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge.)

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Let it go, I say, let it go.

Not a word in this supreme ear,
nothing, I say, whispered,
let not one word of death in,
let go, and follow me, not gently
nor embittered,
not bursting with consolation,
without consolation,
signifying nothing,
thus not without sign –

Just spare me this: the image
spun from the fabric of dust, the empty garble
of syllables, last dying words.

~ from “You Words”, Ingeborg Bachmann

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(model and background)
moths:

















texture from arwen-undomiel.com