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It’s Possible, I’m Moving Through The Hard Veins Of Heavy Mountains, Like An Arc, Alone; I’m So Deep Inside, I See No End In Sight, And No Distance: Everything Is Getting Near And Everything Near Is Turning To Stone.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

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It’s Possible, I’m Moving

Rainer Maria Rilke

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It’s Possible, I’m Moving Through The Hard Veins Of Heavy Mountains, Like An Arc, Alone; I’m So Deep Inside, I See No End In Sight, And No Distance: Everything Is Getting Near And Everything Near Is Turning To Stone.

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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.

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Joy Is A Marvelous Increasing Of What Exists, A Pure Addition Out Of Nothingness.

In The Depths All Becomes Law.

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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.

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

Where I Create, There I Am True.

Go Into Yourself. Dig Into Yourself For A Deep Answer

Everyone Once, Once Only. Just Once And No More. And We Also Once. Never Again. But This Having Been Once, Although Only Once, To Have Been Of The Earth, Seems Irrevocable.

There Would Have To Be Bread, Some Rich, Whole-grain Bread And Zwieback, And Perhaps On A Long, Narrow Dish Some Pale Westphalian Ham Laced With Strips Of White Fat Like An Evening Sky With Bands Of Clouds. There Would Be Some Tea Ready To Be Drunk, Yellowish Golden Tea In Glasses With Silver Saucers, Giving Off A Faint Fragrance.

Music: Breathing Of Statues. Perhaps: Silence Of Paintings. You Language Where All Language Ends. You Time Standing Vertically On The Motion Of Mortal Hearts.

Fame — The Aggregate Of All The Misunderstandings That Collect Around A New Name.

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.

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

. . . Denn Da Ist Keine Stelle, Die Dich Nicht Sieht. Du Musst Dein Leben Andern. (... For There Is No Place That Does Not See You. You Must Change Your Life.)

The Thought Of Being A Creator, Of Engendering, Of Shaping Is Nothing Without The Continuous Great Confirmation And Embodiment In The World, Nothing Without The Thousandfold Assent From Things And Animals... Beautiful And Rich Only Because It Is Full Of Inherited Memories Of The Engendering And Birthing Of Millions.

All The Soarings Of My Mind Begin In My Blood.

There Are So Many Things About Which Some Old Man Ought To Tell One While One Is Little; For When One Is Grown One Would Know Them As A Matter Of Course.

Spring Has Returned. The Earth Is Like A Child That Knows Poems.

A Birdsong Can Even, For A Moment, Make The Whole World Into A Sky Within Us, Because We Feel That The Bird Does Not Distinguish Between Its Heart And The World's.

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.

I Have Patience For Centuries In Me And Will Live As Though My Time Were Very Big.

Having Patience

Only The Individual Who Is Solitary Is Like A Thing Placed Under Profound Laws, And When He Goes Out Into The Morning That Is Just Beginning, Or Looks Out Into The Evening That Is Full Of Happening, And If He Feels What Is Going On There, Then All Status Drops From Him As From A Dead Man, Though He Stands In The Midst Of Sheer Life.

Every Angel Is Terrifying.

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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.

We Must Accept Our Reality As Vastly As We Possibly Can; Everything, Even The Unprecedented, Must Be Possible Within It.

Where Something Becomes Extremely Difficult And Unbearable, There We Also Stand Always Already Quite Near Its Transformation.

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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.

Nothing Strange Should Befall Us, But Only That Which Has Long Belonged To Us. We Will Gradually Learn To Realize That That Which We Call Destiny Goes Forth From Within People, Not From Without Into Them.

So You Mustn't Be Frightened, Dear Mr. Kappus, If A Sadness Rises In Front Of You, Larger Than Any You Have Ever Seen; If An Anxiety - Like Light And Cloud-shadows, Moves Over Your Hands And Everything You Do. You Must Realize That Something Is Happening To You, That Life Has Not Forgotten You, That It Holds You In The Palm Of Its Hand And Will Not Let You Fall.

We See The Brightness Of A New Page Where Everything Yet Can Happen.

My Eyes Already Touch The Sunny Hill. Going Far Ahead Of The Road I Have Begun. So We Are Grasped By What We Cannot Grasp; It Has Inner Light, Even From A Distance- And Charges Us, Even If We Do Not Reach It, Into Something Else, Which, Hardly Sensing It, We Already Are; A Gesture Waves Us On Answering Our Own Wave... But What We Feel Is The Wind In Our Faces.

It Is Good To Be Solitary, For Solitude Is Difficult; That Something Is Difficult Must Be A Reason The More For Us To Do It.

Love The Questions, Themselves.

And Even If You Were In Some Prison, The Walls Of Which Let None Of The Sounds Of The World Come To Your Senses - Would You Not Then Still Have Your Childhood, That Precious, Kingly Possession, That Treasure-house Of Memories?

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Is Not Impermanence The Very Fragrance Of Our Days?

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.

He Was A Worker Whose Only Desire Was To Penetrate With All His Forces Into The Humble And Difficult Significance Of His Tools. Therein Lay A Certain Renunciation Of Life, But In Just This Renunciation Lay His Triumph, For Life Entered Into His Work.

We Ignore The Gods And Fill Our Minds With Trash.

Painting Is Something That Takes Place Among The Colors.

If We Surrendered To Earth's Intelligence We Could Rise Up Rooted, Like Trees.

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Stand Up During Supper And Walk Outdoors, And Keep On Walking.

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

Your Solitude Will Expand And Become A Place Where You Can Live In The Twilight, Where The Noise Of Other People Passes, Far In The Distance.

But Learning-time Is Always A Long, Secluded Time, And So Loving, For A Long While Ahead And Far On Into Life, Is-solitude, Intensified And Deepened Loneness For Him Who Loves.

There Is Time Only To Work Slowly There Is No Time Not To Love

I Hold This To Be The Highest Task For A Bond Between Two People: That Each Protects The Solitude Of The Other.

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

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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.

Always Trust Yourself And Your Own Feelings, As Opposed To Arguments And Discussions. If It Turns Out That You Are Wrong, Then The Natural Growth Of Your Inner Life Will Eventually Guide You To Other Insights.

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

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

A Good Marriage Is That In Which Each Appoints The Other Guardian Of His Solitude

How Can I Keep My Soul In Me, So That It Doesn't Touch Your Soul? How Can I Raise It High Enough, Past You, To Other Things?

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

Perhaps Everything Terrifying Is Deep Down A Helpless Thing That Needs Our Help.

[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.

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Everything Is Gestation And Bringing Forth. To Let Each Impression And Each Germ Of Feeling Come To Completion Wholly In Itself, In The Dark, In The Inexpressible, The Unconscious, Beyond The Reach Of One's Own Intelligence, And Await With Deep Humility And Patience The Birth-hour Of A New Clarity: That Alone Is Living The Artist's Life.

Trees Do Not Force Their Sap, Nor Does The Flower Push Its Bloom.

It Almost Seems As If Autumn Were The True Creator, More Creative Than The Spring, Which Is Too Even-toned, More Creative When It Comes With Its Will-to-change And Shatters The Much Too Ready-made, Self-satisfied And Really Almost Bourgeois-complacent Image Of Summer.

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

At The Bottom No One In Life Can Help Anyone Else In Life; This One Experiences Over And Over In Every Conflict And Every Perplexity: That One Is Alone. That Isn't As Bad As It May First Appear; And Again It Is The Best Thing In Life That Each Should Have Everything In Himself; His Fate, His Future, His Whole Expanse And World.

There Are No Classes In Life For Beginners; Right Away You Are Always Asked To Deal With What Is Most Difficult.

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Beauty Is Nothing But The Beginning Of Terror, Which We Are Still Just Able To Endure, And We Are So Awed Because It Serenely Disdains To Annihilate Us.

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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.

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Shattered People Are Best Represented By Bits And Pieces.

My Life Is Not This Steeply Sloping Hour, In Which You See Me Hurrying. Much Stands Behind Me; I Stand Before It Like A Tree; I Am Only One Of My Many Mouths, And At That, The One That Will Be Still The Soonest. I Am The Rest Between Two Notes, Which Are Somehow Always In Discord Because Death’s Note Wants To Climb Over— But In The Dark Interval, Reconciled, They Stay There Trembling. And The Song Goes On, Beautiful.

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Every Intensification Is Good, If It Is In Your Entire Blood, If It Isn't Intoxication Or Muddiness, But Joy Which You Can See Into, Clear To The Bottom.

Losing Too Is Still Ours; And Even Forgetting Still Has A Shape In The Kingdom Of Transformation. When Something's Let Go Of, It Circles; And Though We Are Rarely The Center Of The Circle, It Draws Around Us Its Unbroken, Marvelous Curve.

Wishes Are Recollections Coming From The Future.

There Is Only One Solitude, And It Is Vast, Heavy, Difficult To Bear, And Almost Everyone Has Hours When He Would Gladly Exchange It For Any Kind Of Sociability, However Trivial Or Cheap, For The Tiniest Outward Agreement With The First Person Who Comes Along.

A Person Isn't Who They Are During The Last Conversation You Had With Them - They're Who They've Been Throughout Your Whole Relationship.

Go Into Yourself And Test The Deeps In Which Your Life Takes Rise; At Its Source You Will Find The Answer To The Question Whether You Must Create. Accept It, Just As It Sounds, Without Inquiring Into It. Perhaps It Will Turn Out That You Are Called To Be An Artist. Then Take That Destiny Upon Yourself And Bear It, Its Burden And Its Greatness, Without Ever Asking What Reward Might Come From Outside

Only Someone Who Is Ready For Everything, Who Doesn't Exclude Any Experience, Even The Most Incomprehensible, Will Live The Relationship With Another Person As Something Alive And Will Himself Sound The Depths Of His Own Being.

It Seems To Me That The Only Way One Can Be Helpful Is To Extend One's Hand To Someone Else Involuntarily, And Without Ever Knowing How Useful This Will Be.

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.

Perhaps Then, Some Day Far In The Future, You Will Gradually, Without Even Noticing It, Live Your Way Into The Answer.

If You Will Cling To Nature, To The Simple In Nature, To The Little Things That Hardly Anyone Sees, And That Can So Unexpectedly Become Big And Beyond Measuring; If You Have This Love Of Inconsiderable Things And Seek Quite Simply, As One Who Serves, To Win The Confidence Of What Seems Poor: Then Everything Will Become Easier, More Coherent And Somehow More Conciliatory For You, Not In Your Intellect, Perhaps, Which Lags Marveling Behind, But In Your Inmost Consciousness, Waking And Cognizance.

We Discover That We Do Not Know Our Role; We Look For A Mirror; We Want To Remove Our Make-up And Take Off What Is False And Real. But Somewhere A Piece Of Disguise That We Forgot Still Sticks To Us. A Trace Of Exaggeration Remains In Our Eyebrows; We Do Not Notice That The Corners Of Our Mouth Are Bent. And So We Walk Around, A Mockery And A Mere Half: Neither Having Achieved Being Nor Actors.

You, Darkness, Of Whom I Am Born- I Love You More Than The Flame That Limits The World To The Circle It Illumines And Excludes The Rest.

I Love You More

Life And Death: They Are One, At Core Entwined. Who Understands Himself From His Own Strain Presses Himself Into A Drop Of Wine And Throws Himself Into The Purest Flame.

The Most Visible Joy Can Only Reveal Itself To Us When We've Transformed It, Within.

Our Task Is To Take This Earth So Deeply And Wholly Into Ourselves That It Will Resurrect Within Our Being.

It Is Good To Say It Aloud: 'nothing Has Happened.' Once Again: 'nothing Has Happened.' Does That Help?"

Perhaps The Great Renewal Of The World Will Consist Of This, That Man And Woman, Freed Of All Confused Feelings And Desires, Shall No Longer Seek Each Other As Opposites, But Simply As Members Of A Family And Neighbors, And Will Unite As Human Beings, In Order To Simply, Earnestly, Patiently, And Jointly Bear The Heavy Responsibility Of Sexuality That Has Been Entrusted To Them.

What Do The Contours Of Your Body Mean, Laid Out Like The Lines On A Hand, So That I No Longer See Them Except As Fate?

Art Too Is Just A Way Of Living, And However One Lives, One Can, Without Knowing, Prepare For It; In Everything Real One Is Closer To It, More Its Neighbor, Than In The Unreal Half-artistic Professions, Which, While They Pretend To Be Close To Art, In Practice Deny And Attack The Existence Of All Art - As, For Example, All Of Journalism Does And Almost All Criticism And Three Quarters Of What Is Called (and Wants To Be Called) Literature.

Think... Of The World You Carry Within You.

For Our Part, When We Feel, We Evaporate; Ah, We Breathe Ourselves Out And Away; With Each New Heartfire We Give Off A Fainter Scent. True, Someone May Tell Us: You're In My Blood, This Room, Spring Itself Is Filled With You . . . To What End? He Can't Hold Us, We Vanish Within Him And Around Him.

Be Patient Toward All That Is Unsolved In Your Heart.

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

The Sky Puts On The Darkening Blue Coat Held For It By A Row Of Ancient Trees; You Watch: And The Lands Grow Distant In Your Sight, One Journeying To Heaven, One That Falls; And Leave You, Not At Home In Either One, Not Quite So Still And Dark As The Darkened Houses, Not Calling To Eternity With The Passion Of What Becomes A Star Each Night, And Rises; And Leave You (inexpressibly To Unravel) Your Life, With Its Immensity And Fear, So That, Now Bounded, Now Immeasurable It Is Alternately Stone In You And Star.

It Is Part Of The Nature Of Every Definitive Love That Sooner Or Later It Can Reach The Beloved Only In Infinity.

Sooner Or Later

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.

Our Heart Always Transcends Us.

For One Human Being To Love Another; That Is Perhaps The Most Difficult Of All Our Tasks, The Ultimate, The Last Test And Proof, The Work For Which All Other Work Is But Preparation.

I Believe That Nothing That Is Real Can Pass Away.

It Is Clear That We Must Embrace Struggle. Every Living Thing Conforms To It. Everything In Nature Grows And Struggles In Its Own Way, Establishing Its Own Identity, Insisting On It At All Cost, Against All Resistance.

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.

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.

It Wasn't His, It Wasn't My Fault, We Both Had Nothing Except Patience, But Death Has None. I Saw Him Come (how Meanly!) And I Watched Him As He Took And Took: None Of It I Could Claim As Mine.

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.

Ask Yourself In The Most Silent Hour Of Your Night: Must I Write [create]? Dig Into Yourself For A Deep Answer.

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

Be Patient With All That Is Uncertain In Your Heart...do Not Search For Answers, Which Will Not Be Given: You Will Not Be Able To Live Them, And Its Importat To Live Everything.

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

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.

Destiny Itself Is Like A Wonderful Wide Tapestry In Which Every Thread Is Guided By An Unspeakable Tender Hand, Placed Beside Another Thread And Held And Carried By A Hundred Others.

Everything Is Blooming Most Recklessly; If It Were Voices Instead Of Colors, There Would Be An Unbelievable Shrieking Into The Heart Of The Night.

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.

Truly To Sing, That Is A Different Breath.

Never Believe Fate Is More Than The Condensation Of Childhood.

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.

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

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

In This There Is No Measuring With Time, A Year Doesn’t Matter, And Ten Years Are Nothing. Being An Artist Means: Not Numbering And Counting, But Ripening Like A Tree, Which Doesn’t Force Its Sap, And Stands Confidently In The Storms Of Spring, Not Afraid That Afterward Summer May Not Come. It Does Come. But It Comes Only To Those Who Are Patient, Who Are There As If Eternity Lay Before Them, So Unconcernedly Silent And Vast. I Learn It Every Day Of My Life, Learn It With Pain I Am Grateful For: Patience Is Everything!

Be-and Yet Know The Great Void Where All Things Begin, The Infinite Source Of Your Own Most Intense Vibration, So That, This Once, You May Give It Your Perfect Assent.

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

They All Have Tired Mouths And Bright Seamless Souls. And A Longing (as For Sin) Sometimes Haunts Their Dreams. They Are Almost All Alike; In God's Gardens They Keep Still, Like Many, Many Intervals In His Might And Melody. Only When They Spread Their Wings Are They Wakers Of A Wind: As If God With His Broad Sculptor- Hands Leafed Through The Pages In The Dark Book Of The Beginning.

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.

We Have No Reason To Mistrust Our World, For It Is Not Against Us. Has It Terrors, They Are Our Terrors; Has It Abysses, Those Abysses Belong To Us; Are Dangers At Hand, We Must Try To Love Them.... Perhaps All The Dragons Of Our Lives Are Princesses Who Are Only Waiting To See Us Once Beautiful And Brave. Perhaps Everything Terrible Is In Its Deepest Being Something Helpless That Wants Help From Us.

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.

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.

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.

Someday You Will Name Me, Then Gently Place Those Burning Holy Roses In My Hair.

What Is Necessary, After All, Is Only This: Solitude, Vast Inner Solitude. To Walk Inside Yourself And Meet No One For Hours-that Is What You Must Be Able To Attain. To Be Solitary As You Were When You Were A Child.

Openness, Patience, Receptivity, Solitude Is Everything.

And Now We Welcome The New Year, Full Of Things That Have Never Been

Everything Terrible Is Something That Needs Our Love.

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

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.

As The Arrow Endures The String, And In The Gathering Momentum Becomes More Than Itself. Because To Stay Is To Be Nowhere.

What Is Happening On Your Innermost Self Is Worthy Of Your Entire Love.

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.

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.

Look, I Am Living. On What? Neither Childhood Nor Future Lessens . . . . Superabundant Existence Wells In My Heart.

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

Beauty Everywhere

Your Preparation For The Real World Is Not In The Answers You’ve Learned, But In The Questions You’ve Learned How To Ask Yourself.

Never Has Grief Been Possessed, Never Has Love Been Learned, And What Removes Us In Death Is Not Revealed.

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

Falling In Love

How I Will Cherish You Then, You Grief-torn Nights! Had I Only Received You, Inconsolable Sisters, On More Abject Knees, Only Buried Myself With More Abandon In Your Loosened Hair. How We Waste Our Afflictions! We Study Them, Stare Out Beyond Them Into Bleak Continuance, Hoping To Glimpse Some End. Whereas They'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.

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

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

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.

If You Trust In Nature, In The Small Things That Hardly Anyone Sees And That Can So Suddenly Become Huge, Immeasurable; If You Have This Love For What Is Humble And Try Very Simply, As Someone Who Serves, To Win The Confidence Of What Seems Poor, Then Everything Will Become Easier For You.

Not Since Moses Has Anyone Seen A Mountain So Greatly.

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.

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.

You Must Think That Something Is Happening Upon You, That Life Has Not Forgotten You, That It Holds You In Its Hand; It Will Not Let You Fall.

If Only It Were Possible For Us To See Farther Than Our Knowledge Reaches, And Even A Little Beyond The Outworks Of Our Presentiment, Perhaps We Would Bear Our Sadnesses With Greater Trust Than We Have In Our Joys.

He Does Not Always Remain Bent Over The Pages; He Often Leans Back And Closes His Eyes Over A Line He Has Been Reading Again, And Its Meaning Spreads Through His Blood.

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

All Feelings That Concentrate You And Lift You Up Are Pure; Only That Feeling Is Impure Which Grasps Just One Side Of Your Being And Thus Distorts You. Everything You Can Think Of As You Face Your Childhood, Is Good. Everything That Makes More Of You Than You Have Ever Been, Even In Your Best Hours, Is Right. Every Intensification Is Good, If It Is In Your Entire Blood, If It Isn't Intoxication Or Muddiness, But Joy Which You Can See Into, Clear To The Bottom.

And One Of The Things I Find Most Moving Is The Way People With Infirmities Manage To Embrace Life, And From The Cool Flowers By The Wayside Reach Conclusions About The Vast Splendour Of Its Great Gardens. They Can, If Their Souls' Strings Are Finely Tuned, Arrive With Much Less Effort At The Feeling Of Eternity; For Everything We Do, They May Dream. And Precisely Where Our Deeds End, Theirs Begin To Bear Fruit.

Love Is Like The Measles. The Older You Get It, The Worse The Attack.

Space For The Spirit To Breathe.

We Make Our Way Through Everything Like Thread Passing Through Fabric, Giving Shape To Images That We Ourselves Do Not Know.

That Is The Principal Thing-not To Remain With The Dream, With The Intention, With The Being-in-the-mood, But Always Forcibly To Convert It All Into Things.

I Am So Afraid Of People's Words.they Describe So Distinctly Everything: And This They Call Dog And That They Call House, Here The Start And There The End. I Worry About Their Mockery With Words, They Know Everything, What Will Be, What Was; No Mountain Is Still Miraculous; And Their House And Yard Lead Right Up To God. I Want To Warn And Object: Let The Things Be! I Enjoy Listening To The Sound They Are Making. But You Always Touch: And They Hush And Stand Still. That's How You Kill.

Love And Death Are The Great Gifts That Are Given To Us; Mostly They Are Passed On Unopened.

O How All Things Are Far Removed And Long Have Passed Away. I Do Believe The Star, Whose Light My Face Reflects, Is Dead And Has Been So For Many Thousand Years. I Had A Vision Of A Passing Boat And Heard Some Voices Saying Disquieting Things. I Heard A Clock Strike In Some Distant House... But In Which House?... I Long To Quiet My Anxious Heart And Stand Beneath The Sky's Immensity. I Long To Pray... And One Of All The Stars Must Still Exist. I Do Believe That I Would Know Which One Alone Endured, And Which Like A White City Stands At The Ray's End Shining In The Heavens.

I Live My Life In Widening Circles That Reach Out Across The World.

Do Not Allow Yourself To Be Misled By The Surfaces Of Things

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.

This Above All-ask Yourself In The Stillest Hour Of Your Night: Must I Write? Delve Into Yourself For A Deep Answer. And If This Should Be Affirmative, If You May Meet This Earnest Question With A Strong And Simple "i Must," Then Build Your Life According To This Necessity; Your Life Even Into Its Most Indifferent And Slightest Hour Must Be A Sign Of This Urge And A Testimony To It. Then Draw Near To Nature. Then Try, Like Some First Human Being, To Say What You See And Experience And Love And Lose.

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.

Comfort Me From Wherever You Are–alone, We Are Quickly Worn Out; If I Place My Head On The Road, Let It Seem Softened By You. Could It Be That Even From Afar We Offer Each Other A Gentle Breath?

What We Call Fate Does Not Come Into Us From The Outside, But Emerges From Us.

Weren't You Always Distracted By Expectation, As If Every Event Announced A Beloved? (where Can You Find A Place To Keep Her, With All The Huge Strange Thoughts Inside You Going And Coming And Often Staying All Night.).

Animals See The Unobstructed World With Their Whole Eyes. But Our Eyes, Turned Back Upon Themselves, Encircle And Seek To Snare The World, Setting Traps For Freedom.

As People Used To Be Wrong About The Motion Of The Sun, So They Are Still Wrong About The Motion Of The Future. The Future Stands Still, It Is We Who Move In Infinite Space.

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.

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.

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.

Don't Observe Yourself Too Closely. Don't Be Too Quick To Draw Conclusions From What Happens To You; Simply Let It Happen.

I Believe In All That Has Never Yet Been Spoken.

The Leaves Are Falling, Falling As If From Far Up,as If Orchards Were Dying High In Space.each Leaf Falls As If It Were Motioning "no."and Tonight The Heavy Earth Is Fallingaway From All Other Stars In The Loneliness.we're All Falling. This Hand Here Is Falling.and Look At The Other One. It's In Them All.and Yet There Is Someone, Whose Handsinfinitely Calm, Holding Up All This Falling.

And You Suddenly Know: It Was Here! You Pull Yourself Together, And There Stands An Irrevocable Year Of Anguish And Vision And Prayer.

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