R.M. Rilke

Oh, say, poet, what you do?                                                   

– I praise.

But what about the deadly and monstrous?

How do you keep going, how do you take it all in?                                                   

– I praise.

But the nameless and unnamed, how do you keep calling out to them, poet?                                                   

– I praise.

Where does it come from, your claim to be real in every guise and each mask?                                                   

– I praise.

And that the stillness and turbulence know you like star and storm?                                                   

– Because I praise.

“For Leonie Zacharias”

And so we keep pushing on and trying to achieve it, trying to contain it in our simple hands, in the overflowing gaze and the speechless heart.

Trying to become it. Whom to give it to? We would hold on to it forever… Ah, what, alas, do we take into that other dimension? Not the gazing which we slowly learned here, and nothing that happened. Nothing.

Suffering then. Above all, then, the difficulty, the long experience of love, then – what is wholly unsayable.

“Duino Elegies”, 9

Quick though the earth itself churns, changing like cloud formations, each fulfilled thing returns to ancient foundations.

“The sonnet to Orpheus” I, 1

But for us, existence is still enchanting; in any number of places, it is still the origin. A playing of pure forces untouched except by one who kneels in wonder.

Words still serenely approach the unsayable. . .   

“The sonnet to Orpheus” II, 10