May 9, 2011

Palm of the Hand

Two Hands

Hand's inner self. Sole, that does its walking
just with feelings. That holds itself face up
and, as in a mirror,
receives from heaven its own meandering pathways.
That has learned to walk on water
when it splashes.
That walks on wells,
transforming every journey.
That finds itself in other hands
and turns them into landscapes,
wanders and arrives in them,
fills them with arrival.

Uncollected Poems

7 comments:

  1. I enjoy the image of the palms of the hands as soles on the feet that walk the world in ways other than walking - transforming, creating, making those other landscapes.

    What lovely mixes of metaphor here, Lorenzo. My thanks to Rilke.

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  2. It makes me imagine a magician passing her hand over a few ebbing coals and it becomes Eden: the poet's voice transforming image into eternity. I think of Rilke with one hand open and the other gripping a pen, writing down palmistry's landscape the way one would sketch one's own hand, as if the entire journey was revealed in the lines found there. And are ... - Brendan

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  3. I enjoy this upturning and transformation too, Elisabeth and Brendan. That image of the artist sketching his own hand, the palm and its river sojourns, how wonderful, Brendan. The painting by Van Gogh evokes that too.

    And that end line, the goal of the work, to transform arrivals into beginnings, not endings. I have not really thought about "arrival" as both an ending and a beginning before this. But of course, every arrival is also a departure.

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  4. "That finds itself in other hands
    and turns them into landscapes,
    wanders and arrives in them,
    fills them with arrival."
    there's so much expression, so many stories, when you hold someone's hand. what beautiful words. steven

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  5. The words "fills them with arrival" suggest so much to me. Is that not a lofty and the worthiest of goals in our lives and interactions with others, to "wander and arrive" and so to fill the hand-landscapes around us with arrival?

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  6. I wonder if Van Gogh had Dürer's 'Praying Hands' somewhere at the back of his mind when painting this?(www.moytura.com/reflections/prayinghands.htm)
    Interesting to compare the significance of both pictures side by side.

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  7. It feels to me like an equally beautiful, but opposite image - One open to the world and others: the other closed in a gesture evoking prayer.
    Both very beautiful!

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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!