Comparing Notes & Thoughts with Rilke

Du dunkelnder Grund, geduldig ertragst du die Mauern

Dear darkening ground,
you've endured so patiently the walls we've built,
perhaps you'll give the cities one more hour

and grant the churches and cloisters two.
And those that labor -- maybe you'll let their work
grip them another five hours, or seven,

before you become forest again, and water, and
widening wilderness
in that hour of inconceivable terror
when you take back your name
from all things.

Just give me a little more time!
I want to love the things
as no one has thought to love them,
until they're real and ripe and worthy of you.

I want only seven days, seven
on which no one has ever written himself --
seven pages of solitude.

There will be a book that includes these pages,
and she who takes it in her hands
will sit staring at it a long time.

until she feels that she is being held
and you are writing.

Ranier Maria Rilke,
The Book of a Monastic Life, 61


Fractured Realizations

My definitions aren't worth all that much.
Anyway.
My understandings are full of fallacies.
Run away,
Far, far away

My presentation is a failure, a sham.
Anyway.
My preparations incomplete, broken up.
Run away,
Far, far away.

And it's not that I've got it all wrong,
But I certainly don't have it all right.
And though I try to realize
I need to keep off my disguise,
I seem to forget,
I try to forget,
I cannot forget all my lies.

APN,
Copyright 08/13/2005


Tripartite

A way to know
A means to knowing
How one can be
How we can become

A way to grow
A means for growing
How one starts to live
How we keep on with our living

A way to move
A means for moving
How one can go beyond
How we can go beyond just going

APN,
Copyright, 08/12/2005