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Thursday, July 28, 2016

You come and go

I'm still slowly savouring the poems from Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God. I keep turning back to this one. It has many resonances for me:

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 forest.

You are the wheel at which I stand,
whose dark spokes sometimes catch me up,
revolve me nearer the centre.
Then the work I put my hand to
widens from turn to turn.