Angel, by Marc Chagall
Earth, isn't this what you want? To arise in us, invisible?
Is it not your dream, to enter us so wholly
there's nothing left outside us to see?
What, if not transformation,
is your deepest purpose? Earth, my love,
I want it too. Believe me,
no more of your springtimes are needed
to win me over—even one flower
is more than enough. Before I was named
I belonged to you. I see no other law
but yours, and know I can trust
the death you will bring.
See, I live. On what?
Childhood and future are equally present.
Sheer abundance of being
floods my heart.
From the Ninth Duino Elegy
oh shit. truly? rilke just did it to me. holy hell, he just screwed me over. holy holy. truly? is anyone else looking around in here with hands up going, how in the hell did he...
ReplyDeletei've just been delightfully pulverized.
it's the intimacy of the conversation! it goes so much further than the forever used manifestation of death with feet, but rather earth just as an entity, just that. i can imagine him benign, a kid with a baseball cap. this is the ultimate acceptance, that even before we are named we are destined. it's almost as though our infant pudge is nothing but a hill of soil waiting to be merged. such patience in this poem. truly, i need a deep breath. this is gorgeous.
Before I was named
I belonged to you. I see no other law
but yours, and know I can trust
the death you will bring.
AND YET DESPITE THE OBVIOUS AND ONCOMING DEATH, so easily he says,
See, I live. On what?
Childhood and future are equally present.
Sheer abundance of being
floods my heart.
i'm crying. am i a nutcase or what? i'm crying. not so much in the eye, but somewhere deeper i feel this, as though my soul is an old pine made of mud, and i am weeping.
xo
erin
robert and i sitting and speaking wondering at the brilliance of this and i think this is important to note, the simplicity of this. it is like walking, just one word in front of the other, simple enough for any one of us to understand this truth, that we are born to die. oh my, how we spend our lives working to make it otherwise, and yet, (and he does this in one simple sentence) Before I was named
ReplyDeleteI belonged to you. here he takes our mythology of sacred infant and shatters it. we, our society, we take our children and build shrines around them, oh holy holy infant, holy holy child, you will grow and prosper, be healthy, have families, not falter. we fear and do not dare use the word death in a sentence with infant or child. and yet, as simple as holding an orange, rilke says every infant is born to die. i'm astounded and excited and grateful too for this.
ruth, this is what i was saying in response to your poem of vanity. we want to manicure ourselves safe, don't we? not realizing there is far greater safety in acceptance. oh, i want to burn this on my soul to know. the know! and yet, see? we can still live. we can still delight. we can still celebrate this moment, this Sheer abundance of being
xo
erin
The rush and wrench of your thoughts and feelings, Erin, is a wild wind, and not one I take lightly or hope to understand and feel in full, or respond to well enough.
ReplyDeleteBut yes!
I think it begins with how "we" (some) raise kids believe they should not fail (die). We [as a culture] weave into their very being that "success" and "failure" are certain things, and only success is viable. I see this growing harder and faster in the parents of the students I advise.
I do see your point about my vanity post, and that yes, you could look at it that way, that somehow we think these ways we primp might protect us from the downhill slope toward death. My response to you there was to show that I was on a different track with it, seeing the delight in the very ways we as humans do meet the world in rituals that are not necessary perhaps, and maybe even are exercises in mini-denials. And yes, we have to face and step-by-step walk through this submission, surrender, to the fact that we are earth, we are going to decay, in fact we are in the process of decay even now. Yet we still trim back the hedges and sweep the sidewalk, for fear that we will be too enveloped by Nature that surrounds us.
I am pretty sure I'm not able to absorb everything you are conveying here, Erin. What you have written is beautiful, and also mind-blowing. Do I have the presence to receive it, in full?
ruth, oh, i'm hugging you. and i should of said more clearly, your response to me on your post was beautiful. beautiful and honest and i was so appreciative of it. and here again. you're so generous with me. and don't think that i don't try my bit to at least trim the hedges:) i just try to understand what i am doing. as you describe it is a graceful being inside of the decline and there is, i think, not a thing wrong with that. (and i love that you use an eyebrow brush, but that is a story for somewhere else.)
ReplyDeleteyes, how we raise our children. how we see life and death. it shapes every aspect of our culture. it shapes how we choose to live. absolutely every aspect of how we live. isn't that ironic?
xo
erin
Thank you. :-)
ReplyDeleteWho said that every poet's daily waking goal is to defeat death? Or something like that. Rilke, Rumi and you show us the goal can be to surrender to it, daily.
What freedom. To trust death. Then we can live. Yes, ironic.
Childhood and future are equally present.
ReplyDeleteHow does one bring the innocence of childhood into the future? We must forget what we have learned - as Miguel Ruiz says in "The Voice of Knowledge," it's all a pack of lies anyway.
Rilke reminds us that abundant life beckons, ready to flood in. This is good.
I came to this blog to ask you a question about Rilke who I don’t know – I saw a book of his poems that he directly wrote in French – have you seen them? Were they translated in English?
ReplyDeleteThis is mind-blowing. Simple and devastating. I want to live in that place of the last stanza.
ReplyDelete