As I've been crafting and creating an Arts Guild in my community this season, a snippet from Rilke's Duino Elegies has been running through my head. Here is an excerpt from the first elegy.
Do you still not know how little endures?
Fling the nothing you are grasping
out into the spaces we breathe.
Maybe the birds
will feel in their flight
how the air has expanded.
Can you see? Springtimes have needed you.
And there are stars expecting you to notice them.
From out of the past, a wave rises to meet you
the way the strains of a violin
come through an open window
just as you walk by.
Man Creating Bird
As if it were all by design.
But are you the one designing it?
Were you not always distracted by yearning,
as though some lover were about to appear?
Let yourself feel it, that yearning
It connects you with those
who have sung it through the ages,
sung especially of love unrequited.
Shouldn't this oldest of sufferings
finally bear fruit for us?
Is it not time
to free ourselves from the beloved
even as we, trembling, endure the loving?
As the arrow endures the bowstring's tension
so that, released, it travels farther.
For there is nowhere to remain.
What a beautifully evocative thought. Springtimes have needed me. Stars have expected me to take notice. On what errata have I been wasting my time?
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