Quiet friend who has come so far, feel how your breathing makes more space around you. Let this darkness be a bell tower and you the bell. As you ring, what batters you becomes your strength. Move back and forth into the change. What is it like, such intensity of pain? If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine. In this uncontainable night, be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses, the meaning discovered there. And if the world has ceased to hear you, say to the silent earth: I flow. To the rushing water, speak: I am.
You can find this poem in the amazing book — In Praise of Mortality: Selections from Rainer Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus.
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We can never trade mystery for mastery. In the darkness, there are no shadows. That’s where we find our own light. Rilke always seems to get there first.
Rilke has been a teacher of mine for many years, so steeped in beauty and truth and terror he is.
I have this reflection of his above my desk for frequent consideration:
“Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.”