Today I realized this discontent I've been feeling lately revolves around the fact that it is fall and I simply haven't been feeding my life with the sustenance it needs...other than God's word that is, I need poetry in my life. Poetry at any other time of the year is readily received by me, but for some reason, in the fall it is a vital necessity.
I was speaking with one of my best and dearest friends and she says this malady, this seasonal dire need for poetry could be a result of the long years we've known each other and she, after all is a Poetess...and a brilliant one...and fall is her time too. SO my dear Poetess...write with abandon! (Then call me quick and nourish this need within me for poetry...even in draft form yours are amazing...) :)
But, last week I was lazily reading Neruda, but tonight, as the realization struck, the cure as it were---I looked lovingly at my bookshelf and found old friends just smiling back at me, content to wait upon my every whim, there sat waiting: Billy Collins, Emily Dickinson, Christina Rossetti, Wistawa Szymborska, Milton, Yeats, Robert Service, and Rilke. Oh, RILKE! Rilke is today's dose.
And I read two poems greedily. And then lo, and behold what should his next one be entitled? The Swan. Yesterday's posting compels me to copy this poem here to my blog...and I don't even know anything else about it other that it is Rilke, and it's called The Swan. SO, we shall discover it together.
The Swan
Rainer Maria Rilke
Translator: Stephen Cohn
Like one who lives in drudgery, constrained
to plod through weary uncompleted toil,
the ungainly swan must labour overland.
And as when dying we anxiously depart
from all that once sustained us in this World,
he anxiously must quit dry land and cast
himself upon the waters, which receive him
as if contented and fulfilled to bear him;
prevailing over sequences of ripples
infinitely silent and secure
and all the time more regal, more assured,
casual in mastery he glides and sails.
......
Ok, so one poem isn't enough and the first one I read tonight was simply beautiful so I have to share that too.
ISBN of this book: 0810116499 should you either need to know the source I'm crediting, the volume so you may run out and get your own...or should you speak German, and love poetry...well, if you do, first...why have you not informed me you could read Rilke without translation?!....second, well, nevermind...it's a good book, and you who read German will enjoy it doubly so.
....
The Angel
Rainer Maria Rilke
I was speaking with one of my best and dearest friends and she says this malady, this seasonal dire need for poetry could be a result of the long years we've known each other and she, after all is a Poetess...and a brilliant one...and fall is her time too. SO my dear Poetess...write with abandon! (Then call me quick and nourish this need within me for poetry...even in draft form yours are amazing...) :)
But, last week I was lazily reading Neruda, but tonight, as the realization struck, the cure as it were---I looked lovingly at my bookshelf and found old friends just smiling back at me, content to wait upon my every whim, there sat waiting: Billy Collins, Emily Dickinson, Christina Rossetti, Wistawa Szymborska, Milton, Yeats, Robert Service, and Rilke. Oh, RILKE! Rilke is today's dose.
And I read two poems greedily. And then lo, and behold what should his next one be entitled? The Swan. Yesterday's posting compels me to copy this poem here to my blog...and I don't even know anything else about it other that it is Rilke, and it's called The Swan. SO, we shall discover it together.
The Swan
Rainer Maria Rilke
Translator: Stephen Cohn
Like one who lives in drudgery, constrained
to plod through weary uncompleted toil,
the ungainly swan must labour overland.
And as when dying we anxiously depart
from all that once sustained us in this World,
he anxiously must quit dry land and cast
himself upon the waters, which receive him
as if contented and fulfilled to bear him;
prevailing over sequences of ripples
infinitely silent and secure
and all the time more regal, more assured,
casual in mastery he glides and sails.
......
Ok, so one poem isn't enough and the first one I read tonight was simply beautiful so I have to share that too.
ISBN of this book: 0810116499 should you either need to know the source I'm crediting, the volume so you may run out and get your own...or should you speak German, and love poetry...well, if you do, first...why have you not informed me you could read Rilke without translation?!....second, well, nevermind...it's a good book, and you who read German will enjoy it doubly so.
....
The Angel
Rainer Maria Rilke
Translator: Stephen Cohn
He shakes his head as if he would dismiss
whatever might confine him or constrain --
for each gigantic heartbeat brings more close
the huge event -- forever orbiting.
All heaven shouts and swarms with presences
ready to summon him: Come! See and witness!
But do not burden with your heaviness
his weightless hands, for they would break your doors
and, raging in the night from room to room,
would seize you and search deep into your heart,
wrench you about as if to give you form --
at last would break your mould, would lift you out.
~K
He shakes his head as if he would dismiss
whatever might confine him or constrain --
for each gigantic heartbeat brings more close
the huge event -- forever orbiting.
All heaven shouts and swarms with presences
ready to summon him: Come! See and witness!
But do not burden with your heaviness
his weightless hands, for they would break your doors
and, raging in the night from room to room,
would seize you and search deep into your heart,
wrench you about as if to give you form --
at last would break your mould, would lift you out.
~K
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