Thy fishes breathe but where thy waters roll;
Thy birds fly but within thy airy sea;
My soul breathes only in thy infinite soul;
I breathe, I think, I love, I live but thee.
Oh breathe, oh think,--O Love, live into me;
Unworthy is my life till all divine,
Till thou see in me only what is thine.
(G. Macdonald. The Diary. January, 5)
Thy birds fly but within thy airy sea;
My soul breathes only in thy infinite soul;
I breathe, I think, I love, I live but thee.
Oh breathe, oh think,--O Love, live into me;
Unworthy is my life till all divine,
Till thou see in me only what is thine.
(G. Macdonald. The Diary. January, 5)
"Rilke knew the meaning of the hidden heart. I first came across the German poet while i worked at Bookworm in Lampeter, 2003. I had a lot of time to fumble through the titles. “Book of Hours: Love Poems to God”, jumped out to me immediately, although it was a good three months later before i opened her. I guess i was little skittish, like a new lover i was somewhat scared of the intensity i felt over a title.
i loved the idea of ‘love poems to god’ - they make god somewhat intimate, secret and close - a picture of the divine or the world i much preferred to the Judaic Patrician
You, God, who live next door-
If at times, through the long night, i trouble you
with my urgent knocking-
this is why; i hear you breathe so seldom..
..As it happens, the wall between us
is very thin, Why couldn’t a cry
from one of us
break it down? It would crumble
easily
If at times, through the long night, i trouble you
with my urgent knocking-
this is why; i hear you breathe so seldom..
..As it happens, the wall between us
is very thin, Why couldn’t a cry
from one of us
break it down? It would crumble
easily
Rilke the Sufi?
When i first read Rilke i was struck by his emotionally honest descriptions of a spiritual heart. He yearns for God like an ardent lover, and seeks in some of his poems to be overcome by his God like a mystic
..May what i do flow from me like a river,
no forcing and no holding back,
the way it is with children
then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
these deepending tides moving out, returning,
i will sing you as no one ever has,
streaming through widening channels
into the open sea.
no forcing and no holding back,
the way it is with children
then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
these deepending tides moving out, returning,
i will sing you as no one ever has,
streaming through widening channels
into the open sea.
For me the poet captures the dark twilight world of the heart beautifully: his earlier work is often in the form of metaphors and symbols - which are more like snapshots of memory. The ideas they seek to express are difficult, immense, sometimes contradictory - a lot like the stumbling of our own hearts when trying to feel their way forward. The rhyme and sense of a Rilke poem is consistent with an inner landcape of pictures, which just throw things together, never answering, just questioning what the truth could be in amongst these difficult visions.
Reaching, these hands would pull you out of the sky
as if you had shattered there,
dashed yourself to pieces in some wild impatience.
What is this I feel falling now,
falling on this parched earth,
softly,
like a spring rain?
as if you had shattered there,
dashed yourself to pieces in some wild impatience.
What is this I feel falling now,
falling on this parched earth,
softly,
like a spring rain?
Rainer Maria Rilke