Coming up with a blog name is never an easy thing. Upon perusing a document with poems and quotes I'd been collecting for a number of years, I came across a Rilke poem I'd saved. Reading it again after not even remembering I'd saved it, it resonated with me deeply. Winter and loneliness as an opportunity for renewal is a beautiful theme, and fits with my great move to another country, and the new experiences that await.
On a Vast Plain (dich wundert nicht des sturmes wucht)
You are not surprised at the force of the storm — you have seen it growing.
The trees flee. Their flight
sets the boulevards streaming. And you know: he whom they flee is the one
you move toward. All your senses
sing him, as you stand at the window
The weeks stood still in summer.
The trees’ blood rose. Now you feel it wants to sink back
into the source of everything. You thought you could trust that power
when you plucked the fruit;
now it becomes a riddle again,
and you again a stranger.
Summer was like your house: you knew where each thing stood.
Now you must go out into your heart as onto a vast plain. Now
the immense loneliness begins.
The days go numb, the wind
sucks the world from your senses like withered
leaves.
Through the empty branches the sky remains. It is what you have.
Be earth now, and evensong.
Be the ground lying under that sky.
Be modest now, like a thing
ripened until it is real,
so that he who began it all
can feel you when he reaches for you.
(Poem translated by Anita Barrow and Joanna Macy)
