I'm slipping

.

I'm slipping.  I'm slipping away

like sand

slipping through fingers.  All

my cells

are open, and all

so thirsty.  I ache and swell

in a hundred places, but mostly

in the middle of my heart.

I want to die.  Leave me alone.

I free I  am almost there -

where the great terror

can dismember me.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from The Book of Hours

the solitary man

.

No, what my heart will be is a tower,

and I will be right out on its rim:

nothing else will be there, only pain

and what can’t be said, only the world.

Only one thing left in the enormous space

that will go dark and then light again,

only one final face full of longing,

exiled into what is always full of thirst,

only one farthest-out face made of stone,

at peace with its own inner weight,

which the distances, who go on ruining it,

force on to deeper holiness.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

opposites

.

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

.

habit - fear - security - exclusion

.

 For if we think of this existence of the individual as a larger or smaller room,
 it appears evident that most people learn to know only a corner of their room, 
a place by the window, a strip of floor on which they walk up and down. 


Thus they have a certain security. And yet that dangerous insecurity
 is so much more human which drives the prisoners in Poe’s stories
 to feel out the shapes of their horrible dungeons 
and not be strangers to the
 unspeakable terror of their abode.

We, however, are not prisoners. No traps or snares are set about us, 
and there is nothing which should intimidate or worry us.
 We are set down in life as in the element to which we best correspond,
 and over and above this we have through thousands of years 
of accommodation become so like this life, that when we hold still
 we are, through a happy mimicry, scarcely to be distinguished
 from all that surrounds us. 


We have no reason to mistrust our world, 
for it is not against us. Has it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses, 
those abysses belong to us; are dangers at hand, we must try to love them.
 And if only we arrange our life according to that principle which counsels
 us that we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now still seems
 to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful.


 How should we be able to forget those ancient myths about dragons
 that at the last moment turn into princesses; 


perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting 
to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its 
deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

any good? you ask me.

You ask whether your verses are any good. You ask me. 
You have asked others before this. You send them to magazines. 
You compare them with other poems, and you are upset
 when certain editors reject your work. Now
 (since you have said you want my advice) I beg you to stop
 doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside,
 and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise
 or help you – no one. There is only one thing you should do. 

Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; 
see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart;
 confess to yourself whether you would have to die 
if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself
 in the most silent hour of your night: must I write?

 Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent,
 if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must,”
 then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life,
 even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, 
must become a sign and witness to this impulse.

 ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from  Letters to a Young Poet, Letter One

art: self-portrait Edvard Munch

all will come again

All will come again into its strength:

the fields undivided, the waters undammed,

the trees towering and the walls built low.

And in the valleys, people as strong

and varied as the land.

And no churches where God

is imprisoned and lamented

like a trapped and wounded animal.

The houses welcoming all who knock

and a sense of boundless offering

in all relations, and in you and me.

No yearning for an afterlife, no looking beyond,

no belittling of death,

but only longing for what belongs to us

and serving earth, lest we remain unused.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke
 from: 'The Book of Hours'

are you prepared?

These Things whose essential life you want to express first ask you, 
"Are you free?  Are you prepared to devote all your love to me...?" 
 And if the Thing sees that you are otherwise occupied with even a particle
 of your interest, it shuts itself off;  it may perhaps give you some slight sign
 of friendship, a word or a nod, but it will never give you its heart, 
entrust you with its patient being, its sweet sidereal constancy, 
which makes it so like the constellations in the sky.  

In order for a Thing to speak to you, you must regard it for a certain time
 as the only one that exists, as the one and only phenomenon which, 
through your laborious and exclusive love, is now placed at the center of the universe,
 and which, in that incomparable place, is on the day attended by angels.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke 

from a letter to Baladine Klossowska

translated by Stephen Mitchell

what you cannot hold

You who let yourselves feel: enter the breathing
that is more than your own.
Let it brush your cheeks
as it divides and rejoins beside you.

Blessed ones, whole ones,
you where the heart begins:
You are the bow that shoots the arrows
and you are the target.

Fear not the pain. Let its weight fall back
into the earth;
for heavy are the mountains, heavy the seas.

The trees you planted in childhood have grown
too heavy. You cannot bring them along.
Give yourselves to the air, to what you cannot hold.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke
Sonnets to Orpheus, Part One, IV

  translation by Macy and Barrows

 

 

 

 

a hundred roots silently drinking

I have many brothers in the South

who move, handsome in their vestments,

through cloister gardens.

The Madonnas they make are so human,

and I dream often of their Titians,

where God becomes an ardent flame.

But when I lean over the chasm of myself -

it seems

my God is dark

and like a web: a hundred roots

silently drinking.

This is the ferment I grow out of.

More I don't know, because my branches

rest in deep silence, stirred only by the wind.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from The Book of Monastic Life, I,3

.

a thousand walls

We must not portray you in king's robes,

you drifting mist that brought forth the morning.

Once again from the old paintboxes

we take the same gold for scepter and crown

that has disguised you through the ages.

Piously we produce our images of you

till they stand around you like a thousand walls  

And when our hearts would simply open,

our fervent hands hide you.

~ Rainer Rilke

from The Book of Monastic Life

 art by marika-k

 

it belonged to no one

You playmates of mine in the scattered parks of the city,

small friends from childhood of long ago:

how we found and liked one another, hesitantly,

and, like the lamb with the talking scroll,

spoke with our silence. When we were filled with joy

it belonged to no one: it was simply there.

And how it dissolved among all the adults who passed by

and in the fears of the endless year.

Wheels rolled past us, we stood and stared at the carriages;

horses surrounded us, solid but untrue--and none 

of them ever knew us. What in the world was real?

Nothing. Only the balls. Their magnificent arches.

Not even the children . . . But sometimes one,

oh a vanishing one, stepped under the plummeting ball.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

 In memorial: Egon von Rilke
(beloved cousin of Rilke who died young) 

how

How shall I hold on to my soul, so that
it does not touch yours? How shall I gently
lift it up over you on to other things?
I would so very much like to tuck it away
among long lost objects in the dark,
in some quiet, unknown place, somewhere
which remains motionless when your depths resound.

And yet everything which touches us, you and me,
takes us together like a single bow,
drawing out from two strings but one voice.
On which instrument are we strung?
And which violinist holds us in his hand?
O sweetest of songs.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from New Poems - 1907 

Rilke met Lou Andreas-Salomé in 1897. He was 22, she was 36.
 Their love story lasted until 1901 and turned into a friendship 
that only ended with Rilke’s death in 1926. 

Your being has been the door that allowed me to reach fresh air for the first time.

the great golden hive of the invisible

Nature, and the things we live with and use, 
precede us and come after us. But they are, 
so long as we are here, our possession and our friendship.
 They know us with our needs and our pleasures,
 as they did those of our ancestors, 
whose trusted companions they were.

So it follows that all that is here is not to be despised 
and put down, but, precisely because it did precede us, 
to be taken by us with the innermost understanding 
that these appearances and things must be seen and transformed.

Transformed? Yes. For our task is to take this earth so deeply 
and wholly into ourselves that it will resurrect within our being. 
We are bees of the invisible. Passionately we plunder the honey of the visible
 in order to gather it in the great golden hive of the invisible.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from a letter to Witold Hulewicz

November 13, 1925

because loved, a pure beast came to be

This is the non-existent animal.
Not knowing that, they loved it, loved its ways,
its neck, its posture, loved its quiet gaze
down to the light within it, loved it all.

True, it was not. But, because loved, a pure
beast came to be. A space was kept, conceded.
And in that space, left blank for it, secure,
it gently raised its head and hardly needed

to be. They fed it on no kind of corn,
but always only with the right to be.
And on the beast such power this could confer,

its brow put forth new growth. A single horn.
White, it sought out a virgin's company -
and was inside the mirror and in her.





~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from Sonnets to Orpheus II, 4

 

 

 

 

 

 

the voices

The rich and fortunate do well to keep silent,
for no one cares to know who and what they are.
But those in need must reveal themselves,
must say: I am blind,
or: I'm on the verge of going blind,
or: nothing goes well with me on earth,
or: I have a sickly child,
or: I have little to hold me together...

And chances are this is not nearly enough.

And because people try to ignore them as they
pass by them: these unfortunate ones have to sing!

And at times one hears some excellent singing!

Of course, people differ in their tastes: some would
prefer to listen to choirs of boy-castrati.

But God himself comes often and stays long,
when the castrati's singing disturbs Him.

~Rainer Maria Rilke

the solitude of the other

 art by Ralf Winkler

I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: 

that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other.

 For, if it lies in the nature of indifference and of the crowd to recognize no solitude,

 then love and friendship are there for the purpose of continually providing

 the opportunity for solitude. And only those are the true sharings

 which rhythmically interrupt periods of deep isolation...

All companionship can consist only in the strengthening of two neighboring solitudes,

 whereas everything that one is wont to call giving oneself is by nature 

harmful to companionship: for when a person abandons himself, 

he is no longer anything, and when two people both give themselves up

 in order to come close to each other, there is no longer

 any ground beneath them...

once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings

 infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up,

 if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible

 for each to see the other whole and against a wide sky!


~ Rainer Maria Rilke
from Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties:
 Translations and Considerations

Let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

Love one another but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together, yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not

 in each other’s shadow.

 ~ Kahlil Gibran

from The Prophet
 

 art by Odilon Redon

that pure unseparated element

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:h 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 Marie Rilke

from the  Duino Elegies

excerpt from the Eighth Elegy  

 

 

 

 

be ahead of all parting

Be ahead of all parting, as though it already were

behind you, like the winter that has just gone by.

For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter

that only by wintering through it will your heart survive.

Be forever dead in Eurydice - more gladly arise

into the seamless life proclaimed in your song.

Here, in the realm of decline, among momentary days,

be the crystal cup that shattered even as it rang.

Be - and yet know the great void where all things begin,

the infinite source of your own most intense vibration,

so that, this once, you may give it your perfect assent.

To all that is used-up, and to all the muffled and dumb

creatures in the world's full reserve, the unsayable sums,

joyfully add yourself, and cancel the count.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke
The Sonnets to Orpheus, II,13

from The Enlightened Heart
an anthology of sacred poetry
edited and translated by Stephen Mitchell

many shapes

You come and go. The doors swing closed 

ever more gently, almost without a shudder. 

Of all those who move through the quiet houses, 

you are the quietest. 

We become so accustomed to you, 

we no longer look up 

when your shadow falls over the book we are reading 

and makes it glow. For all things 

sing you: at times 

we just hear them more clearly. 

Often when I imagine you 

your wholeness cascades into many shapes. 

You run like a herd of luminous deer 

and I am dark, I am forest. 

You are a wheel at which I stand, 

whose dark spokes sometimes catch me up, 

revolve me nearer to the center. 

Then all the work I put my hand to 

widens from turn to turn. 

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from Love Poems to God, 

The Book of Monastic Life

what language can't reach

The deep parts of my life pour onward,

as if the river shores were opening out.

It seems that things are more like me now,

that I can see farther into paintings.

I feel closer to what language can’t reach.

With my sense, as with birds, I climb

into the windy heaven, out of the oak,

and in the ponds broken off from the sky

my feeling sinks, as if standing on fishes.

~  Rainer Maria Rilke

translation by Robert Bly