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His Vision, From The Constantly Passing Bars, Has Grown So Weary That It Cannot Hold Anything Else. It Seems To Him There Are A Thousand Bars, And Behind The Bars, No World. As He Paces In Cramped Circles, Over And Over, The Movement Of His Powerful Soft Strides Is Like A Ritual Dance Around A Center In Which A Mighty Will Stands Paralyzed. Only At Times, The Curtain Of The Pupils Lifts, Quietly. An Image Enters In, Rushes Down Through The Tense, Arrested Muscles, Plunges Into The Heart And Is Gone.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

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His Vision, From The

Rainer Maria Rilke

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His Vision, From The Constantly Passing Bars, Has Grown So Weary That It Cannot Hold Anything Else. It Seems To Him There Are A Thousand Bars, And Behind The Bars, No World. As He Paces In Cramped Circles, Over And Over, The Movement Of His Powerful Soft Strides Is Like A Ritual Dance Around A Center In Which A Mighty Will Stands Paralyzed. Only At Times, The Curtain Of The Pupils Lifts, Quietly. An Image Enters In, Rushes Down Through The Tense, Arrested Muscles, Plunges Into The Heart And Is Gone.

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If My Devils Are To Leave Me, I'm Afraid My Angels Will Take Flight As Well.

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You Are Not Too Old And It Is Not Too Late To Dive Into Your Increasing Depths Where Life Calmly Gives Out It's Own Secret

Spring Has Again Returned. The Earth Is Like A Child That Knows Many Poems. Many, O So Many. For The Hardship Of Such Long Learning She Receives The Prize. Strict Was Her Teacher. The White In The Old Man's Beard Pleases Us. Now, What To Call Green, To Call Blue, We Dare To Ask: She Knows, She Knows!

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May You Find In Yourself Enough Patience To Endure And Enough Simplicity To Have Faith.

Bound By Conventions, People Tend To Reach For What Is Easy. Here We Must Be Unafraid Of What Is Difficult. For All Living Beings In Nature Must Unfold In Their Particular Way And Become Themselves Despite All Opposition.

All This Hurrying Soon Will Be Over. Only When We Tarry Do We Touch The Holy.

Don't Be Too Quick To Draw Conclusions From What Happens To You; Simply Let It Happen. Otherwise It Will Be Too Easy For You To Look With Blame... At Your Past, Which Naturally Has A Share With Everything That Now Meets You.

If Your Everyday Life Appears To Be Unworthy Subject Matter, Do Not Complain To Life. Complain To Yourself, Lament That You Are Not Poet Enough To Call Up Its Wealth.

The Artist's Experience Lies So Unbelievably Close To The Sexual, To Its Pain And Its Pleasure, That The Two Phenomena Are Really Just Different Forms Of One And The Same Longing And Bliss.

The Hero Is Strangely Akin To Those Who Die Young.

The Quieter We Are, The More Patient And Open We Are In Our Sadnesses, The More Deeply And Serenely The New Presence Can Enter Us, And The More We Can Make It Our Own, The More It Becomes Our Fate.

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I Feel It Now: There's A Power In Me To Grasp And Give Shape To My World I Know That Nothing Has Ever Been Real Without My Beholding It. All Becoming Has Need Me.

Just As Language Has No Longer Anything In Common With The Thing It Names, So The Movements Of Most Of The People Who Live In Cities Have Lost Their Connection With The Earth; They Hang, As It Were, In The Air, Hover In All Directions, And Find No Place Where They Can Settle.

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I Prayed To Rediscover My Childhood, And It Has Come Back, And I Feel That It Is Just As Difficult As It Used To Be, And That Growing Older Has Served No Purpose At All.

If There Is Nothing You Can Share With Other People, Try To Be Close To Things, They Will Not Abandon You; And The Nights Are Still Here And The Winds That Move Through The Trees And Across Many Lands; Everything In The World Of Things And Animals Is Still Filled With Happening, Which You Can Take Part In.

I Believe In All That Has Never Yet Been Spoken.

All Emotions Are Pure Which Gather You And Lift You Up; That Emotion Is Impure Which Seizes Only One Side Of Your Being And So Distorts You.

Sometime We Will Have To Stop Overevaluating The Word. We Shall Learn To Realize That It Is Only One Of The Many Bridges That Connect The Island Of Our Soul With The Great Continent Of Common Life. . . The Broadest, Perhaps, But In No Way The Most Refined.

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Only Those Sadnesses Are Dangerous And Bad Which One Carries About Among People In Order To Drown Them Out.

This Is The Miracle That Happens Every Time To Those Who Really Love; The More They Give, The More They Possess Of That Precious Nourishing Love From Which Flowers And Children Have Their Strength And Which Could Help All Human Beings If They Would Take It Without Doubting.

Earth, My Dearest, Oh Believe Me, You No Longer Need Your Springtimes To Win Me Over...unspeakably, I Have Belonged To You, From The Flush.

Everything Terrible Is Something That Needs Our Love.

Do You Remember How Life Yearned Out Of Childhood Toward The "great Thing?" I See That It Is Now Yearning Forth Beyond The Great Thing Toward The Greater One.

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In One Creative Thought A Thousand Forgotten Nights Of Love Revive, Filling It With Sublimity And Exaltation.

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What Batters You Becomes Your Strength.

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Fame, That Public Destruction Of One In Process Of Becoming, Into Whose Building-ground The Mob Breaks, Displacing His Stones.

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I Want To Love The Things As No One Has Thought To Love Them.

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Dig Deep Into Your Heart, Where The Answer Spreads Its Roots In Your Being, And Ask Yourself Solemnly, Must I Write?

Of All My Books, I Find Only A Few Indispensible.

Let Life Happen To You. Believe Me: Life Is In The Right, Always.

And You Should Not Let Yourself Be Confused In Your Solitude By The Fact That There Is Something In You That Wants To Move Out Of It.

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Not Since Moses Has Anyone Seen A Mountain So Greatly.

This Is In The End The Only Kind Of Courage That Is Required Of Us: The Courage To Face The Strangest, Most Unusual, Most Inexplicable Experiences That Can Meet Us.

Be Patient Toward All That Is Unsolved In Your Heart.

May I Strike My Heart's Keys Clearly, And May None Fail Because Of Slack, Uncertain, Or Fraying Strings. May The Tears That Stream Down My Face Make Me More Radiant: May My Hidden Weeping Bloom.... How We Waste Our Afflictions!... [t]hey're Really Our Wintering Foliage, Our Dark Greens Of Meaning, One Of The Seasons Of The Clandestine Year—; Not Only A Season—: They're Site, Settlement, Shelter, Soil, Abode.

We Are Not Permitted To Linger, Even With What Is Most Intimate.

Somewhere There Is An Ancient Enmity Between Our Daily Life And The Great Work. Help Me In Saying It, To Understand It.

Now For Some Heartwork.

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May You Gain More And More Confidence In What Is Difficult And In Your Solitude Among Other People.

Across The Moment, Aeons Speak With Aeons. More Than We Experienced Has Gone By.

Do Not Be Bewildered By The Surfaces: In The Depths All Becomes Law.

Life + A Cat ... Adds Up To An Incalculable Sum.

What We Fight With Is So Small, And When We Win, It Makes Us Small. What We Want Is To Be Defeated, Decisively, By Successively Greater Things

I Want To Unfold. I Don't Want To Stay Folded Anywhere, Because Where I Am Folded, There I Am A Lie, And I Want My Grasp Of Things To Be True. I Want To Describe Myself Like A Painting That I Looked At Closely For A Long Time, Like A Saying That I Finally Understood, Like The Pitcher I Use Every Day, Like The Face Of My Mother, Like A Ship That Carried Me Through The Wildest Storm Of All.

I Want To Be With Those Who Know Secret Things Or Else Alone.

Life Is Cut To Allow For Growth ... One May Vigorously Put On Weight Before One Fills It Out Entirely.

A Work Of Art Is Good If It Has Arisen Out Of Necessity. That Is The Only Way One Can Judge It.

The Artist's Task Consists Of Making One Thing Of Many, And A World From The Smallest Part Of A Thing.

Irony: Don't Let Yourself Be Controlled By It, Especially During Uncreative Moments.

I Don’t Want To Stand Before You Like A Thing, Shrewd, Secretive. I Want My Own Will, And I Want Simply To Be With My Will, As It Goes Toward Action. And In The Silent, Sometimes Hardly Moving Times, When Something Is Coming Near, I Want To Be With Those Who Know Secret Things Or Else Alone. I Want To Unfold. I Don’t Want To Be Folded Anywhere, Because Where I Am Folded, There I Am A Lie.

Be Ahead Of All Farewells As If They Were Behind You, Like The Winter That Is Just Departing.

To All That Is Used-up, And To All The Muffled And Dumb Creatures In The World's Full Reserve, The Unsayable Sums, Joyfully Add Yourself, And Cancel The Count.

You, God, Who Live Next Door - If At Times, Through The Long Night, I Trouble You With My Urgent Knocking - This Is Why: I Hear You Breathe So Seldom. I Know You're All Alone In That Room. If You Should Be Thirsty, There's No One To Get You A Glass Of Water. I Wait Listening, Always. Just Give Me A Sign! I'm Right Here... Sen Komşu Tanrı, Uzun Geceler Bazen, Kapına Vura Vura Uyandırıyorsam Seni Solumanı Seyrek Duyduğumdandır... Bilirim, Yalnızsın Odanda. Sana Birşey Gerekse Kimse Yok, Bir Yudum Su Versin Aradığında. Hep Dinlerim, Yeter Ki Bir Ses Edin, Öyle Yakınım Sana.

Make Your Ego Porous. Will Is Of Little Importance, Complaining Is Nothing, Fame Is Nothing. Openness, Patience, Receptivity, Solitude Is Everything.

A Kind Of Memory That Tells Us That What We're Now Striving For Was Once Nearer And Truer And Attached To Us With Infinite Tenderness. Here All Is Distance, There It Was Breath. After The First Home The Second One Seems Draughty And Strangely Sexed.

You Are Also The Physician Who Must Watch Over Yourself. But In The Course Of Every Illness There Are Many Days In Which The Physician Can Do Nothing But Wait.

[a]t Bottom, And Just In The Deepest And Most Important Things, We Are Unutterably Alone, And For One Person To Be Able To Advise Or Even Help Another, A Lot Must Happen, A Lot Must Go Well, A Whole Constellation Of Things Must Come Right In Order Once To Succeed.

Take Your Well-disciplined Strengths, Stretch Them Between The Two Great Opposing Poles, Because Inside Human Beings Is Where God Learns.

What Keeps You From... Living Your Life As A Painful And Lovely Day In The History Of A Great Pregnancy?

There Are Moments In Which A Rose Is More Important Than A Piece Of Bread

I Know Of No Other Advice Than This: Go Within And Scale The Depths Of Your Being From Which Your Very Life Springs Forth.

Think... Of The World You Carry Within You, And Call This Thinking Whatever You Want To: A Remembering Of Your Own Childhood Or A Yearning Toward A Future Of Your Own - Only Be Attentive To What Is Arising Within You, And Place That Above Everything You Perceive Around You. What Is Happening In Your Innermost Self Is Worthy Of Your Entire Love; Somehow You Must Find A Way To Work At It.

Fate Loves To Invent Patterns And Designs. Its Difficulty Lies In Complexity. But Life Itself Is Difficult Because Of Its Simplicity. It Has Only A Few Things Of A Grandeur Not Fit For Us.

Leave To Your Opinions Their Own Quiet Undisturbed Development, Which, Like All Progress, Must Come From Deep Within And Cannot Be Pressed Or Hurried By Anything.

For Beauty Is Nothing But The Beginning Of Terror Which We Are Barely Able To Endure, And It Amazes Us So, Because It Serenely Disdains To Destroy Us. Every Angel Is Terrible.

Draw Near To Nature. Then Try Like Some First Human Being To Say What You See And Experience And Love And Lose.

Keep Growing Quietly And Seriously Throughout Your Whole Development; You Cannot Disturb It More Rudely Than By Looking Outward And Expecting From Outside Replies To Questions That Only Your Inmost Feeling In Your Most Hushed Hour Can Perhaps Answer.

Just As The Creative Artist Is Not Allowed To Choose, Neither Is He Permitted To Turn His Back On Anything: A Single Refusal, And He Is Cast Out Of The State Of Grace And Becomes Sinful All The Way Through.

Physical Pleasure Is A Sensual Experience No Different From Pure Seeing Or The Pure Sensation With Which A Fine Fruit Fills The Tongue; It Is A Great Unending Experience, Which Is Given Us, A Knowing Of The World, The Fullness And The Glory Of All Knowing. And Not Our Acceptance Of It Is Bad; The Bad Thing Is That Most People Misuse And Squander This Experience And Apply It As A Stimulant At The Tired Spots Of Their Lives And As Distraction Instead Of A Rallying Toward Exalted Moments.

Yield Not Thy Neck To Fortune's Yoke, But Let Thy Dauntless Mind Still Ride In Triumph Over All Mischance. In The Difficult Are The Friendly Forces, The Hands That Work On Us.

You Must Change Your Life.

Changing Your Life

You Darkness, That I Come From, I Love You More Than All The Fires That Fence In The World.

I Love You More

There Exists A Creature Which Is Perfectly Harmless; When It Passes Before Your Eyes You Scarcely Notice It And Forget It Again Immediately. But As Soon As It Invisibly Gets Somehow Into Your Ears, It Develops There, It Hatches, As It Were, And Cases Have Been Known Where It Was Penetrated Even Into The Brain And Has Thriven Devastatingly In That Organ, Like Those Pneumococci In Dogs That Gain Entrance Through The Nose.this Creature Is One's Neighbor.

But Your Solitude Will Be A Support And A Home For You, Even In The Midst Of Very Unfamiliar Circumstances, And From It You Will Find All Your Paths.

Be Ahead Of All Parting, As Though It Already Were Behind You.

Painting Is Something That Takes Place Among The Colors, And One Has To Leave Them Alone Completely, So That They Can Settle The Matter Among Themselves. Their Intercourse: This Is The Whole Of Painting. Whoever Meddles, Arranges, Injects His Human Deliberation, His Wit, His Advocacy, His Intellectual Agility In Any Way, Is Already Disturbing And Clouding Their Activity.

Have Patience With Everything That Remains Unsolved In Your Heart. Try To Love The Questions Themselves...at Present You Need To Live The Question. Perhaps You Will Gradually, Without Even Noticing It, Find Yourself Experiencing The Answer.

Finding Yourself

We Ignore The Gods And Fill Our Minds With Trash.

Perhaps All The Dragons Of Our Lives Are Princesses Who Are Only Waiting To See Us Once Beautiful And Brave.

No One Can Advise And Help You, No One. There Is Only One Way: Go Within.

Look: The Trees Exist; The Houses We Dwell In Stand There Stalwartly. Only We Pass By It All, Like A Rush Of Air. And Everything Conspires To Keep Quiet About Us, Half Out Of Shame Perhaps, Half Out Of Some Secret Hope.

Lord, It Is Time. The Summer Was Very Big. Lay Thy Shadow On The Sundials, And On The Meadows Let The Winds Go Loose. Command The Last Fruits That They Shall Be Full; Give Them Another Two More Southerly Days, Press Them On To Fulfillment And Drive The Last Sweetiness Into The Heavenly Wine.

Love The Questions Themselves...live The Questions Now And Have Confidence That Someday Far Into The Future, [i Will Live My] Way Into The Answer.

Solitude Is Nothing That One Can Choose Or Retrain From. We Are Solitary. We Can Delude Ourselves About This And Act As If It Were Not True. That Is All.

Look, Lovers: Almost Separately They Come Towards Us Through The Flowery Grass And Slowly; Parting's So Far From Thought Of, They Indulge The Extravagance Of Walking Unembraced.

I Am The Rest Between Two Notes Which Are Somehow Always In Discord.

I Would Like To Step Out Of My Heart And Go Walking Beneath The Enormous Sky.

Ideally A Painter (and, Generally, An Artist) Should Not Become Conscious Of His Insights: Without Taking The Detour Through His Reflective Processes, And Incomprehensibly To Himself, All His Progress Should Enter So Swiftly Into The Work That He Is Unable To Recognize Them In The Moment Of Transition. Alas, The Artist Who Waits In Ambush There, Watching, Detaining Them, Will Find Them Transformed Like The Beautiful Gold In The Fairy Tale Which Cannot Remain Gold Because Some Small Detail Was Not Taken Care Of.

Here Is The Time For The Sayable, Here Is Its Home. Speak And Attest. More Than Ever The Things We Can Live With Are Falling Away, And Ousting Them, Filling Their Place, A Will With No Image. Will Beneath Crusts Which Readily Crack Whenever The Act Inside Swells And Seeks New Borders.

Where I Create, There I Am True.

Quiet Friend Who Has Come So Far, Feel How Your Breathing Makes More Space Around You. Let This Darkness Be A Bell Tower And You The Bell. As You Ring, What Batters You Becomes Your Strength. Move Back And Forth Into The Change. What Is It Like, Such Intensity Of Pain? If The Drink Is Bitter, Turn Yourself To Wine. In This Uncontainable Night, Be The Mystery At The Crossroads Of Your Senses, The Meaning Discovered There. And If The World Has Ceased To Hear You, Say To The Silent Earth: I Flow. To The Rushing Water, Speak: I Am.

Believe In A Love That Is Being Stored Up For You Like An Inheritance, And Have Faith That In This Love There Is A Strength And A Blessing So Large That You Can Travel As Far As You Wish Without Having To Step Outside It.

Why Don't You Think Of [god] As The One Who Is Coming, Who Has Been Approaching From All Eternity... The Ultimate Fruit Of A Tree Whose Leaves We Are.

I Live Not In Dreams But In Contemplation Of A Reality That Is Perhaps The Future.

No, No, One Can Imagine Nothing In The World, Not The Least Thing. Everything Is Composed Of So Many Isolated Details That Are Not To Be Foreseen. In One's Imagining One Passes Over Them And Hasty As One Is Doesn't Notice That They Are Missing. But Realities Are Slow And Indescribably Detailed.

More Unsayable Than All Other Things Are Works Of Art, Those Mysterious Existences, Whose Life Endures Beside Our Own Small, Transitory Life.

I Beg You, To Have Patience With Everything Unresolved In Your Heart And To Try To Love The Questions Themselves As If They Were Locked Rooms Or Books Written In A Very Foreign Language.

Why Should You Want To Give Up A Child's Wise Not-understanding In Exchange For Defensiveness And Scorn, Since Not-understanding Is, After All, A Way Of Being Alone, Whereas Defensiveness And Scorn Are A Participation In Precisely What, By These Means, You Want To Separate Yourself From.

Be Patient With All That Is Unsolved In Your Life. Learn To Love The Questions Themselves, Until Some Distant Day, Without Your Knowing, You Will Have Lived Into The Answers.

Success, Which Is Something So Simple In The End, Is Made Up Of Thousands Of Things, We Never Fully Know What.

Interior Of The Hand. Sole That Has Come To Walk Only On Feelings. That Faces Upward And In Its Mirror Receives Heavenly Roads, Which Travel Along Themselves. That Has Learned To Walk Upon Water When It Scoops, That Walks Upon Wells, Transfiguring Every Path. That Steps Into Other Hands, Changes Those That Are Like It Into A Landscape: Wanders And Arrives Within Them, Fills Them With Arrival.

Sometimes A Man Stands Up During Supper And Walks Outdoors, And Keeps On Walking, Because Of A Church That Stands Somewhere In The East. And His Children Say Blessings On Him As If He Were Dead. And Another Man, Who Remains Inside His Own House, Stays There, Inside The Dishes And In The Glasses, So That His Children Have To Go Far Out Into The World Toward That Same Church, Which He Forgot.

Understand, I'll Slip Quietly Away From The Noisy Crowd When I See The Pale Stars Rising, Blooming, Over The Oaks. I'll Pursue Solitary Pathways Through The Pale Twilit Meadows With Only This One Dream: You Come Too.

Be Forever Dead In Eurydice-more Gladly Arise Into The Seamless Life Proclaimed In Your Song. Here, In The Realm Of Decline, Among Momentary Days, Be The Crystal Cup That Shattered Even As It Rang.

Were It Possible For Us To See Further Than Our Knowledge Reaches, And Yet A Little Way Beyond The Outworks Of Our Divinings, Perhaps We Would Endure Our Sadnesses With Greater Confidence Than Our Joys. For They Are The Moments When Something New Has Entered Into Us, Something Unknown; Our Feelings Grow Mute In Shy Perplexity, Everything In Us Withdraws, A Stillness Comes, And The New, Which No One Knows, Stands In The Midst Of It And Is Silent.

He Who Understands One Thing Understands Everything, For The Same Laws Are In All.

It Was Not In Me It Came And Went I Wanted To Hold It It Was Held By Wine (i No Longer Know What It Was)

If We Only Arrange Our Life In Accordance With The Principle Which Tells Us That We Must Always Trust In The Difficult, Then What Now Appears To Us As The Most Alien Will Become Our Most Intimate And Trusted Experience. How Could We Forget Those Ancient Myths That Stand At The Beginning Of All Races, The Myths About Dragons That At The Last Moment Are Transformed Into Princesses? Perhaps All The Dragons In Our Lives Are Princesses Who Are Only Waiting To See Us Act, Just Once, With Beauty And Courage.

Verses Are Not, As People Think, Feelings (those One Has Early Enough) -- They Are Experiences. For The Sake Of A Verse One Must See Many Cities, Men, And Things, One Must Know The Animals Feel How Birds Fly, And Know The Gesture With Which The Little Flowers Open In The Morning.

Thus We Live, Forever Taking Leave.

The Point Is To Live Everything.

I Never Read Anything Concerning My Work. I Feel That Criticism Is A Letter To The Public Which The Author, Since It Is Not Directed To Him, Does Not Have To Open And Read.

Let Everything Happen To You Beauty And Terror Just Keep Going No Feeling Is Final

... Be Indulgent Toward Those Who ... Are Afraid Of The Aloneness That You Trust.

The Deepest Experience Of The Creator Is Feminine, For It Is Experience Of Receiving And Bearing.

All Things Want To Float.

And Now Let Us Believe In A Long Year That Is Given To Us, New, Untouched, Full Of Things That Have Never Been, Full Of Work That Has Never Been Done, Full Of Tasks, Claims, And Demands; And Let Us See That We Learn To Take It Without Letting Fall Too Much Of What It Has To Bestow Upon Those Who Demand Of It Necessary, Serious, And Great Things.

But You, Divine Poet, You Sang On Till The End As The Swarm Of Rejected Maenads Attacked You, Shrieking, You Overpowered Their Noise With Harmony, And From Pure Destruction Arose Your Transfigured Song.

That Is Why Young People, Who Are Beginners In Everything, Are Not Yet Capable Of Love: It Is Something They Must Learn. With Their Whole Being, With All Their Forces, Gathered Around Their Solitary, Anxious, Upward-beating Heart, They Must Learn To Love.

Read As Little As Possible Of Literary Criticism - Such Things Are Either Partisan Opinions, Which Have Become Petrified And Meaningless, Hardened And Empty Of Life, Or Else They Are Just Clever Word-games, In Which One View Wins Today, And Tomorrow The Opposite View. Works Of Art Are Of An Infinite Solitude, And No Means Of Approach Is So Useless As Criticism.

Have Patience With Everything That Remains Unsolved In Your Heart. Do Not Despair If The Answers Don't Come Immediately. Some Answers Are Only Revealed With The Passage Of Time.

Our Task Is To Listen To The News That Is Always Arriving Out Of Silence.

The Work Of The Eyes Is Done. Go Now And Do The Heart-work On The Images Imprisoned Within You.

I Don't Want To Stay Folded Anywhere, Because Where I Am Folded, There I Am A Lie.

What We Do Battle With Is So Small, What Battles Us Is So Large.

And Your Doubt Can Become A Good Quality If You Train It. It Must Become Knowing, It Must Become Criticism. Ask It, Whenever It Wants To Spoil Something For You, Why Something Is Ugly, Demand Proofs From It, Test It, And You Will Find It Perhaps Bewildered And Embarrassed, Perhaps Also Protesting. But Don't Give In, Insist On Arguments, And Act In This Way, Attentive And Persistent, Every Single Time, And The Day Will Come When, Instead Of Being A Destroyer, It Will Become One Of Your Best Workers-perhaps The Most Intelligent Of All The Ones That Are Building Your Life.

Most People Come To Know Only One Corner Of Their Room, One Spot Near The Window, One Narrow Strip On Which They Keep Walking Back And Forth.

And Still It Is Not Enough To Have Memories. One Must Be Able To Forget Them When They Are Many, And One Must Have The Great Patience To Wait Until They Come Again. For It Is Not Yet The Memories Themselves. Not Until They Have Turned To Blood Within Us, To Glance, To Gesture, Nameless And No Longer To Be Distinguished From Ourselves - Not Until Then Can It Happen That In A Most Rare Hour The First Word Of A Verse Arises In Their Midst And Goes Forth From Them.

Who Speaks Of Conquering? To Endure Is Everything.

Perhaps The Same Bird Echoed Through Both Of Us Yesterday, Seperate, In The Evening.

Love Consists Of This: Two Solitudes That Meet, Protect And Great Each Other.

Falling In Love

It Is A Tremendous Act Of Violence To Begin Anything. I Am Not Able To Begin. I Simply Skip What Should Be The Beginning.

And Isn't The Whole World Yours? For How Often You Set It On Fire With Your Love And Saw It Blaze And Burn Up And Secretly Replaced It With Another World While Everyone Slept. You Felt In Such Complete Harmony With God, When Every Morning You Asked Him For A New Earth, So That All The Ones He Had Made Could Have Their Turn. You Thought It Would Be Shabby To Save Them And Repair Them; You Used Them Up And Held Out Your Hands, Again And Again, For More World. For Your Love Was Equal To Everything.

...a Carefree Letting Go Of Oneself, Not A Caution, But A Wise Blindness.

And I Circle Ten Thousand Years Long; And I Still Don't Know If I'm A Falcon, A Storm, Or An Unfinished Song

The Highest Form Of Love Is To Be The Protector Of Another Person’s Solitude.

To Be Here Is Immense.

The Only Sadnesses That Are Dangerous And Unhealthy Are The Ones That We Carry Around In Public In Order To Drown Them Out With The Noise.

You See, I Want A Lot. Perhaps I Want Everything The Darkness That Comes With Every Infinite Fall And The Shivering Blaze Of Every Step Up. So Many Live On And Want Nothing And Are Raised To The Rank Of Prince By The Slippery Ease Of Their Light Judgments But What You Love To See Are Faces That Do Work And Feel Thirst. You Love Most Of All Those Who Need You As They Need A Crowbar Or A Hoe. You Have Not Grown Old, And It Is Not Too Late To Dive Into Your Increasing Depths Where Life Calmly Gives Out Its Own Secret.

It Is So Often On The Name Of A Misdeed That A Life Goes To Pieces, Not The Nameless And Personal Action Itself, Which Was Perhaps A Perfectly Definite Necessity Of That Life And Would Have Been Absorbed By It Without Effort.

Now I Come To You Full Of Future. And From Habit We Begin To Live Our Past.

Your Life Will Still Find Its Own Paths From There, And That They May Be Good, Rich, And Wide Is What I Wish For You, More Than I Can Say.

Go On Loving What Is Good, Simple, And Ordinary.

Perhaps Creating Something Is Nothing But An Act Of Profound Remembrance.

Fig Tree, How Long It's Been Full Meaning For Me, The Way You Almost Entirely Omit To Flower And Into The Seasonably-resolute Fruit Uncelebratedly Thrust Your Purest Secret. Like The Tube Of A Fountain, Your Bent Bough Drives The Sap Downwards And Up: And It Leaps From Its Sleep, Scarce Waking, Into The Joy Of Its Sweetest Achievement.

But There Is Much Beauty Here, Because There Is Much Beauty Everywhere.

Beauty Everywhere

Once The Realization Is Accepted That Even Between The Closest Human Beings Infinite Distances Continue, A Wonderful Living Side By Side Can Grow, If They Succeed In Loving The Distance Between Them Which Makes It Possible For Each To See The Other Whole Against The Sky.

Ah, Not To Be Cut Off, Not Through The Slightest Partition Shut Out From The Law Of The Stars. The Inner -- What Is It? If Not The Intensified Sky, Hurled Through With Birds And Deep With The Winds Of Homecoming.

Be Patient Toward All That Is Unsolved In Your Heart And Try To Love The Questions Themselves, Like Locked Rooms And Like Books That Are Now Written In A Very Foreign Tongue. Do Not Now Seek The Answers, Which Cannot Be Given You Because You Would Not Be Able To Live Them. And The Point Is, To Live Everything. Live The Questions Now. Perhaps You Will Then Gradually, Without Noticing It, Live Along Some Distant Day Into The Answer.

That Is Longing: To Dwell In The Flux Of Things, To Have No Home In The Present. And These Are Wishes: Gentle Dialogues Of The Poor Hours With Eternity.

A Merging Of Two People Is An Impossibility, And Where It Seems To Exist, It Is A Hemming-in, A Mutual Consent That Robs One Party Or Both Parties Of Their Fullest Freedom And Development.

I Am A House Gutted By Fire Where Only The Guilty Sometimes Sleep Before The Punishment That Devours Them Hounds Them Out In The Open.

The Necessary Thing Is After All But This; Solitude, Great Inner Solitude. Going Into Oneself For Hours Meeting No One - This One Must Be Able To Attain.

All The Soarings Of My Mind Begin In My Blood.

Resolve To Be Always Beginning-to Be A Beginner!

Do Not Assume That He Who Seeks To Comfort You Now, Lives Untroubled Among The Simple And Quiet Words That Sometimes Do You Good. His Life May Also Have Much Sadness And Difficulty, That Remains Far Beyond Yours. Were It Otherwise, He Would Never Have Been Able To Find These Words.

Let Your Beauty Manifest Itself Without Talking And Calculation. You Are Silent. It Says For You: I Am. And Comes In Meaning Thousandfold, Comes At Long Last Over Everyone.

Life Is Heavier Than The Weight Of All Things.

Do Continue To Believe That With Your Feeling And With Your Work You Are Taking Part In The Greatest; The More Strongly You Cultivate In Yourself This Belief, The More Will Reality And World Go Forth From It.

If We Surrendered To Earth’s Intelligence We Could Rise Up Rooted, Like Trees. Instead We Entangle Ourselves In Knots Of Our Own Making And Struggle, Lonely And Confused. So Like Children, We Begin Again... To Fall, Patiently To Trust Our Heaviness. Even A Bird Has To Do That Before He Can Fly. (from The Poem "how Sure Gravity's Law")

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