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Rilke’s Book of Hours & Dan’s Painting

If you love to read poems that make you gasp slightly, that say something to the deep core of you, you’ll love Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy.  It’s no secret I’m a fan of Rilke; in fact I’ve taken my blog name from one of his quotes (which you can read it here at the top of my main blog page).

This book is an edited version, full of inquisitive searching poems, designed to ask startling questions and make perceptive statements.  When Rilke began the poems, he was twenty-three.  He wrote because he felt inspired, and at the time had no idea others would read his words.

I want to share two of them with you, only to whet your appetite, because I think you’d like the entire collection.  The italicized label of the title above will lead you to Amazon, if you click on it.

Du siehst, ich will viel

I, 14

You see, I want a lot.
Maybe I want it all:
the darkness of each endless fall,
the shimmering light of each ascent.

So many are alive who don’t seem to care.
Casual, easy, they move in the world
as though untouched.

But you take pleasure in the faces
of those who know they thirst.
You cherish those
who grip you for survival.

You are not dead yet, it’s not too late
to open your depths by plunging into them
and drink in the life
that reveals itself quietly there.

Alle, welche dich suchen, versuchen dich

II, 15

All who seek you
test you.
And those who find you
bind you to image and gesture.

I would rather sense you
as the earth senses you.
In my ripening
ripens
what you are.

I need from you no tricks
to prove you exist.
Time, I know,
is other than you.

No miracles, please.
Just let your laws
become clearer
from generation to generation.

Aren’t those lovely ponderings?  I have one more treat for today, or perhaps it’s more for my sake than yours, but my lovely husband hung his second painting in my study last night.  Can I just say I’m so touched by his kindness and foresight and beautiful rendering of a blue spruce, that my heart skips a beat as I’m writing this, because there it is, looking down on me as I type?  It’s his second in his monochrome painting series.  It’s of a blue spruce in the dead of winter.  You can tell because all the deciduous trees’ limbs are bare, and the sky is starkly clear and frigid.  You can just tell.  It’s amazing.

I’ll try to post something here, but the picture does no justice to the painting.

Have a glorious Friday, y’all!

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