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.

by Rainer Maria Rilke

As with most of Austrian Rainer Maria Rilke’s writings, I’m left beautifully mystified and beguiled by this poem. Something in me recognises and resonates with the longing he describes and knows it as my own – stars, sky, outer space and inner homecoming are all mixed together in a pile of metaphors and feeling. I want to fall into the poem and fly freely there a night-bird amongst birds, wild in the air and wholly unseparate.
Rilke’s poems are often velvety dark and full of enigma and this is why I love them and this is why I feel reluctant to engage any analytics or thinking mind curiosity for this one. How is it to completely let go off making something of it and to just feel the impact of the words? Would you like to read it again with this orientation? Maybe you could imagine walking slowly into the poem as if it were a mountain lake (poet John Keat’s advice not mine!) and then just be there ‘letting it get amongst you’ as one Mystical Poetry course participant said the other day…………… How was that? What gift did the poem give you?

I love this by Hafiz (rendered by Daniel Ladinsky):

‘A poet is someone who can pour light into a cup, then raise it to nourish your parched, holy mouth.’

And this by Grace Cavalieri, host and producer:

‘Reading great poetry is like finding a breath on the page that’s your own.’

What do these two quotes offer you in how you might receive the poems in our Wonder Words blog?

Ps. Would you like to take part in a day long retreat dedicated to receiving poems like this? We have one coming up in November (book here) and one just before the new year which hasn’t been advertised yet.

Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash

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