A Nod to Rilke

Glad for this poem this morning, from Rilke, the Austrian Poet of the late 1800s and early 1900s.

I believe in the end, and particularly in these times, we humans are meant to move more toward what is real, not further away, lured by illusion. It is to the simple and clear that has importance, for me. Not away to the entrained, yet obscuring, false grandness.

The deep work of the heart — of kindness, of consciousness, of flow with life, of facing demons within or without, of cultivating joy even if minutely — is the point. Or so it is for me, so that the rest might continue to fall in place.

So, a nod Rainer Maria Rilke, of thanks.

All will come again into its strength:
the fields undivided, the waters undammed,
the trees towering and the walls built low.
And in the valleys, people as strong and varied as the land.

And no churches where God
is imprisoned and lamented
like a trapped and wounded animal.
The houses welcoming all who knock
and a sense of boundless offering
in all relations, and in you and me.

No yearning for an afterlife, no looking beyond,
no belittling of death,
but only longing for what belongs to us
and serving earth, lest we remain unused.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~

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