April 26, 2011

Your First Word Was Light

Sketch, by Auguste Rodin

Your first word of all was light,
and time began. Then for long you were silent.

Your second word was man, and fear began,
which grips us still.

Are you about to speak again?
I don't want your third word.

From the Book of Hours I, 44

6 comments:

  1. I share Rilke's hesitancy.

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  2. The third word will be peace, or love...it is the same. And only feared by the ego.

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  3. i think the first word was love. steven

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  4. Ahhh... No poet is afraid of third word...

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  5. i think it is not the poet afraid of the third word but man himself. perhaps the third word is reckoning or mirror. ha. what then? perhaps we would see. perhaps we would grieve. perhaps then though our conscience and consciousness would grow enough. enough~

    this is an interesting piece though. i imagine coming and answering to this piece differently every day of my life. what poetry in this then!

    steven suggests the first word was love. perhaps i'd have once thought so but it is from light that darkness falls like a thinly shaved slice of meat. and so it would be that polarity would instantly be born with lightness. but i suppose from love hate would fall. but it seems to me at this point in my life that while we would love to pet love like a kitten curled on our sleeve, we are not as kind as all that, the world is not as kind as all that, perhaps life itself and even god is not as kind as all that.

    andrew suggests peace or love for the third word. i'm not sure those words can be with man. i'm not sure. my brow is furrowed. i don't know. we are not the lot of sweet innocents. we are not easily trained from our desperate egos. this i believe is right, unfortunately right.

    and so this is a very good poem. so many questions fall, so many debates, so much meat.

    xo
    erin

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"Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night."

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Go ahead, bloom recklessly!