Spiritual Sunday
I’m traveling this weekend–Julia and I are headed to Slovenia–so you’re getting my Sunday post early. This Rilke poem may be about God or it may be about the the special spirit that lights up the universe (actually both are the same thing). God is the still small voice, the glow we experience when we are reading poetry, a herd of luminous deer running through a dark forest.
Rilke also says that, when he is caught up in the spokes of God’s ever-turning wheel, he is drawn inward toward the center. Meanwhile, “all the work I put my hand to widens from turn to turn.” This, I suppose, would make God simultaneously a centrifugal and centripetal force.
Which sounds about right.
You Come and Go
By Rainer Maria Rilke
You come and go. The doors swing closed
ever more gently, almost without a shudder
Of all who move through the quiet houses,
you are the quietest.We become so accustomed to you,
we no longer look up
when your shadow falls over the book we are reading
and makes it glow. For all things
sing you: at times
we just hear them more clearly.Often when I imagine you
your wholeness cascades into many shapes.
You run like a herd of luminous deer
and I am dark. I am a forest.You are a wheel at which I stand,
whose dark spokes sometimes catch me up,
revolve me nearer to the centre.
Then all the work I put my hand to
widens from turn to turn.