12/23/14

These are the words

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
flare up like a flame!
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Go to the limits of your longing.  — From Rilke’s Book of Hours

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"Everything I thought I wanted
is right here,
particularly when the sun
is making such a comeback,
and the lilac engorged
with purple has recovered
from its severe pruning,
and you will be back soon
to dispel whatever it is
that overtakes me like leaf blight, even on a day like this. I can still
hear remnants of the rain
in the swollen stream
behind the house, in the faint
dripping under the eaves,
persistent as memory.
And all the things I didn't think
I wanted, cut like the lilac back
to the roots, push up again
from underground."
-- Linda Pastan, "After a month of rain"