departure

To go forth now

from all the entanglement

that is ours and yet not ours,

that, like the water in an old well,

reflects us in fragments, distorts what we are.

 

From all that clings like burrs and brambles—

to go forth

and see for once, close up, afresh,

what we had ceased to see—

so familiar it had become.

 

To glimpse how vast and how impersonal

is the suffering that filled your childhood.

Yes, to go forth, hand pulling away from hand.

 

Go forth to what? To uncertainty,

to a country with no connections to us

and indifferent to the dramas of our life.

 

What drives you to go forth? Impatience, instinct,

a dark need, the incapacity to understand.

 

To bow to all this.

To let go—

even if you have to die alone.

Is this the start of a new life?

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

excerpt from  The Prodigal Son, 

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

art by Ruth Norman