opposites

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With all its eyes the natural world looks out

into the Open.  Only our eyes are turned 

backward, and surround plant, animal, child 

like traps, as they emerge into their freedom.

We know what is really out there only from

the animal's gaze;

 for we take the very young

child and force it around, so that it sees

objects - not the Open, which is so

deep in animals' faces.  Free from death.

We, only, can see death; the free animal

has its decline in back of it, forever,

and God in front, and when it moves, it moves

already in eternity, like a fountain.

Never, not for a single day, do we have 

before us that pure space into which flowers 

endlessly open. Always there is World

and never Nowhere without the No: that pure

unseparated element which one breathes

without desire and endlessly knows. 

 A child 

may wander there for hours, through the timeless

stillness, may get lost in it and be 

shaken back. Or someone dies and is it.

For , nearing death, one doesn't see death; but stares

beyond, perhaps with an animal's vast gaze.

Lovers, if the beloved were not there

blocking the view, are close to it, and marvel...

As if by some mistake, it opens for them

behind each other.. But neither can move past

the other, and it changes back to World.

Forever turned toward objects, we see in them

the mere reflection of the realm of freedom,

which we have dimmed. Or when some animal

mutely, serenely, looks us through and through.

That is what fate means: to be opposite,

to be opposite and nothing else, forever.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

excerpt from the Duino Elegies, #8
translated by Stephen Mitchell
photo by shreve stockton

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