Today, while waiting for my ride home from work, these lines from Rilke's "Go to the limits of your longing" popped into my head:
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don't let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.
And suddenly I had a flash, a glimpse, a deliciously brief taste of what my next novel is going to say. Definitely something worth rejoicing over, even if only to myself.
Here's the whole poem, just because it's that beautiful.
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,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.
Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don't let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.
(Translated by Joanna Macy & Anita Barrows)
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don't let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.
And suddenly I had a flash, a glimpse, a deliciously brief taste of what my next novel is going to say. Definitely something worth rejoicing over, even if only to myself.
Here's the whole poem, just because it's that beautiful.
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,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.
Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don't let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.
(Translated by Joanna Macy & Anita Barrows)
What a gorgeous poem! It's definitely inspiring. :)
ReplyDeleteI love it. Really speaks to me! Thank you.
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking of getting a literary tattoo. I like "Flare up like a flame and make big shadows" or "Go to the limits of your longing" but then I think, what limits? I'll never have limits! :)
ReplyDeleteThere's also Shakespeare's "My words fly up" from "My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go."