What Language Can't Reach

I'm a firm believer in paying attention to anything that seems to re-occur or present itself repeatedly to me.

Today, it is the poet Rainer Maria Rilke.

Since obtaining my iPad, I read the three free articles available daily on from The New York Times. Today in the Book Review essay, "Fallen Idols," Margo Rabb writes about her teenage love affair with Rilke's book Letters to a Young Poet, and how she had longed to meet him. Since that is impossible, she decided as an adult to Google him, and learned that he was considered a "jerk" and "one of the most repugnant human beings in literary history."  Her essay goes on to examine the relationship between authors and their fans, and is quite good.  It's worth reading.

I thought about writing about favorite authors I have met, but realized I didn't have much to say.

Later, I visited one of my favorite blogs, Better Living Through Beowulf, where literature professor Robin Bates considers our times through works of literature.  On Sunday, he approaches the spiritual, so I usually try to catch up with his blog then. 

So...who is featured on his blog today? You guessed it -- Rilke.  The post is a wonderful meditation on how we come into the world, how we embody God, how we know when we "arrive".  The poem he presents is affecting and I highly recommend you read it for yourself.

As much as I loved the poem presented, and even though I had learned Rilke was an arrogant bastard, I knew there was still something I was to seek and find in relation to this poet.

My next step was to pull the book Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke off the shelf and breeze through to find what poem is supposed to be mine today. What poem of Rilke's -- now that he has crossed my path twice in less than two hours -- is going to speak to my present experience?

I found one: "Moving Forward."

I love it. 

Coincidentally (or not) I had already decided not to worry about a blog post today until maybe later.  I had gone to Facebook and reposted my blog post from yesterday under the comment "Looking forward."

Here is Rilke's poem.  I am not going to say much about it, except it is speaking deeply to me and all that I've been feeling and journaling about these last few days. I'm not going to analyze.  I'm going to let it be.

After all, the poem is about the unexplainable and that which has no words.

Moving Forward

The deep parts of my life pour onward,

as if the river shores were opening out.

It seems that things are more like me now,

that I can see farther into paintings.

I feel closer to what language can't reach.

With my senses, as with birds, I climb

into the windy heaven, out of the oak,

and in the ponds broken off from the sky

my feeling sinks, as if standing on fishes.