29 June 2020

Stehender: wie ein Trank den Durst 
durchstürzt ihn die Schwerkraft. 

He who stands: as a drink through thirst 
gravity pours down through him.

2 comments

taiji heartwork said...

Rilke trans: Stephen Mitchell

taiji heartwork said...

See also, from Rilke's Book of Hours:

How surely gravity's law,
strong as an ocean current,
takes hold of the smallest thing
and pulls it toward the heart of the world.

Each thing—
each stone, blossom, child—
is held in place.
Only we, in our arrogance,
push out beyond what we each belong to
for some empty freedom.

If we surrendered
to earth's intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.

Instead we entangle ourselves
in knots of our own making
and struggle, lonely and confused.

So like children, we begin again
to learn from the things,
because they are in God's heart;
they have never left him.

This is what the things can teach us:
to fall,
patiently to trust our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that
before he can fly.