Rilke Book Of Hours Quotes

I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world.

If we surrendered to earth's intelligence we could rise up rooted, like trees.

I am circling around God, around the ancient tower, and I have been circling for a thousand years, and I still don't know if I am a falcon, or a storm, or a great song.

I love the dark hours of my being. My mind deepens into them. There I can find, as in old letters, the days of my life, already lived, and held like a legend, and understood.

I am too alone in the world, and yet not alone enough to make every moment holy. I am too tiny in this world, and not tiny enough just to lie before you like a thing, shrewd and secretive. I want my own will, and I want simply to be with my will, as it goes toward action; and in those quiet, 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 be a mirror for your whole body, and I never want to be blind, or to be too old to hold up your heavy and swaying picture. 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 before you. 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.

God speaks to each of us as he makes us, then walks with us silently out of the night. These are the words we dimly hear: You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing. Embody me. Flare up like a flame and make big shadows I can move in. Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final. Don't let yourself lose me. Nearby is the country they call life. You will know it by its seriousness. Give me your hand.

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.

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.

I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone enough.

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 live my life in growing orbits which move out over this wondrous world, I am circling around God, around ancient towers and i have been circling for a thousand years. And I still dont know if I am an eagle or a storm or a great song.

So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp.

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.

I want to unfold. I don’t want to be folded anywhere, because where I am folded, there I am a lie.

I live my life in widening circle That reach out across the world. I may not ever complete the last one, But I give myself to it. I circle around God, that primordial tower. I have been circling for thousands of years, And I still don't know: am I a falcon, A storm, or a great song? [I, 2]

Often when I imagine you, your wholeness cascades into many shapes. You run like a herd of luminous deer, and I am dark; I am forest.

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.

Put out my eyes, and I can see you still; slam my ears to, and I can hear you yet; and without any feet can go to you; and tongueless, I can conjure you at will. Break off my arms, I shall take hold of you and grasp you with my heart as with a hand; arrest my heart, my brain will beat as true; and if you set this brain of mine afire, upon my blood I then will carry you.

But when I lean over the chasm of myself— it seems my God is dark and like a web: a hundred roots silently drinking. This is the ferment I grow out of. More I don’t know, because my branches rest in deep silence, stirred only by the wind.

So many are alive who don’t seem to care. Casual, easy, they move in the world as though untouched.   But you take pleasure in the faces of those who know they thirst. You cherish those who grip you for survival.

You, yesterday’s boy, to whom confusion came: Listen, lest you forget who you are. It was not pleasure you fell into. It was joy. You were called to be bridegroom, though the bride coming toward you is your shame. What chose you is the great desire. Now all flesh bares itself to you. On pious images pale cheeks blush with a strange fire. Your senses uncoil like snakes awakened by the beat of the tambourine. Then suddenly you’re left all alone with your body that can’t love you and your will that can’t save you. But now, like a whispering in dark streets, rumors of God run through your dark blood.

I’m too alone in the world, yet not alone enough to make each hour holy. I’m too small in the world, yet not small enough to be simply in your presence, like a thing— just as it is. I want to know my own will and to move with it. And I want, in the hushed moments when the nameless draws near, to be among the wise ones— or alone. I want to mirror your immensity. I want never to be too weak or too old to bear the heavy, lurching image of you. I want to unfold. Let no place in me hold itself closed, for where I am closed, I am false. I want to stay clear in your sight.

All who seek you test you. And those who find you bind you to image and gesture. I would rather sense you as the earth senses you. In my ripening ripens what you are.

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...

And many a day's hours were like that. As if someone fashioned my likeness somewhere in order to torment it slowly with needles. I felt each sharp prick of his playing, and it was: as if a rain fell on me in which all things change.

How surely gravity's law, strong as an ocean current, takes hold of the smallest thing and pulls it toward the heart of the world. Each thing--- each stone, blossom, child--- is held in place. Only we, in our arrogance, push out beyond what we each belong to for some empty freedom. 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 learn from the things, because they are in God's heart; they have never left him. This is what the things can teach us: to fall, patiently to trust our heaviness. Even a bird has to do that before he can fly.

No, my life is not this precipitous hour through which you see me passing at a run.

I love the dark hours of my being. My mind deepens into them. There I can find, as in old letters, the days of my life, already lived, and held like a legend, and understood. Then the knowing comes: I can open to another life that’s wide and timeless. So I am sometimes like a tree rustling over a gravesite and making real the dream of the one its living roots embrace: a dream once lost among sorrows and songs.

I know that nothing has ever been real without my beholding it. All becoming has needed me. My looking ripens things ― Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

No waiting the beyond, no peering toward it, but longing to degrade not even death; we shall learn earthliness, and serve its ends, to feel its hands about us like a friend's.

Piously we produce our images of you till they stand around you like a thousand walls. And when our hearts would simply open, our fervent hands hide you.

She who reconciles the ill-matched threads of her life, and weaves them gratefully into a single cloth— it’s she who drives the loudmouths from the hall and clears it for a different celebration   where the one guest is you. In the softness of evening it’s you she receives.   You are the partner of her loneliness, the unspeaking center of her monologues. With each disclosure you encompass more and she stretches beyond what limits her, to hold you.

So now my prayer is this: You, my own deep soul, trust me. I will not betray you. My blood is alive with many voices telling me I am made of longing. — Rainer Maria Rilke, from “Dann bete du, wie es dich dieser Iehrt,” Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, trans. Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy (Riverhead Books, 1996)

That’s when I want you— you knower of my emptiness, you unspeaking partner to my sorrow— that’s when I need you, — Rainer Maria Rilke, from “Ich bin derselbe noch, der kniete,” Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, trans. Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy (Riverhead Books, 1996)

I want to utter you. I want to portray you not with lapis or gold, but with colors made of apple bark. There is no image I could invent that your presence would not eclipse.

You are not dead yet, it’s not too late to open your depths by plunging into them and drink in the life that reveals itself quietly there.

you are ever again the wave     sweeping through all things     RAINER MARIA RILKE, BOOK OF HOURS

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final. —Rainer Maria Rilke, The Book of Hours

Does the ore feel trapped in coins and gears? does it feel homesick for earth?,

You are the deep innerness of all things, the last word that can never be spoken.

Sometimes a man rises from the supper table and goes outside. And he keeps on going because somewhere to the east there’s a church.

I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world. I may not complete this last one but I give myself to it.

I circle for millennia, around God, around the ancient tower,    and still do not know: am I hawk, a storm, or a great song?

You are not surprised at the force of the storm— you have seen it growing. The trees flee. Their flight sets the boulevards streaming. And you know: he whom they flee is the one you move toward. All your senses sing him, as you stand at the window. The weeks stood still in summer. The trees’ blood rose. Now you feel it wants to sink back into the source of everything. You thought you could trust that power when you plucked the fruit: now it becomes a riddle again and you again a stranger. Summer was like your house: you know where each thing stood. Now you must go out into your heart as onto a vast plain. Now the immense loneliness begins. The days go numb, the wind sucks the world from your senses like withered leaves. Through the empty branches the sky remains. It is what you have. Be earth now, and evensong. Be the ground lying under that sky. Be modest now, like a thing ripened until it is real, so that he who began it all can feel you when he reaches for you. - Onto a Vast Plain

You see, I am one who likes to look for things. I am one who, barely noticed, like a shepherd, comes up from behind … One who dreams of making you complete, and in that way completes himself.

All who seek you test you. And those who find you bind you to image and gesture. I would rather sense you as the earth senses you. In my ripening ripens what you are. I need from you no tricks to prove you exist. Time, I know, is other than you. No miracles, please. Just let your laws become clearer from generation to generation.

That your world is in agony is no reason to turn your back on it, or to try to escape into private “spiritual” pursuits. Rilke reminded me that I had the strength and courage to walk out into the world as into my own heart, and to “love the things / as no one has thought to love them” (I, 61).

This is what the things can teach us: to fall, patiently to trust our heaviness. Even a bird has to do that before he can fly.

May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children.

I want to unfold. Let no place in me hold itself closed, for where I am closed, I am false.

I am a city by the sea sinking into a toxic tide

The mind is but a visitor: it thinks us out of our world. Each mind fabricates itself. We sense its limits, for we have made them.

I believe in all that has never been spoken. I want to free what waits within m so that what no one has dared to wish for may for once spring clear without my contriving.

I believe in all that has never been spoken. I want to free what waits within me so that what no one has dared to wish for may for once spring clear without my contriving.

Go to the limits of your longing. ... Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.

Duino Elegies

You said live out loud, and die you said lightly, and over and over again you said be.

...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. ― Rainer Maria Rilke, from “How Sure Gravity's Law,” Rainer Maria Rilke's the Book of Hours: A New Translation with Commentary (Camden House, May 2nd 2008) Originally published April 1905.

And lovers also gather your inheritance. They are the poets of one brief hour. They kiss an expressionless mouth into a smile as if creating it anew, more beautiful. Awakening desire, they make a place where pain can enter; that’s how growing happens. They bring suffering along with their laughter, and longings that had slept and now awaken to weep in a stranger’s arms. — Rainer Maria Rilke, from “Und du erbst das Grün,” Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, trans. Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy (Riverhead Books, 1996)

You see, I want a lot. Maybe I want it all: the darkness of each endless fall, the shimmering light of each ascent. — Rainer Maria Rilke, from “Du Siehst, ich will viel,” Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, trans. Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy (Riverhead Books, 1996)

Lösch mir die Augen aus" Lösch mir die Augen aus: ich kann dich sehn, wirf mir die Ohren zu: ich kann dich hören, und ohne Füße kann ich zu dir gehn, und ohne Mund noch kann ich dich beschwören. Brich mir die Arme ab, ich fasse dich mit meinem Herzen wie mit einer Hand, halt mir das Herz zu, und mein Hirn wird schlagen, und wirfst du in mein Hirn den Brand, so werd ich dich auf meinem Blute tragen. "Put out my eyes, and I can see you still" Put out my eyes, and I can see you still, Slam my ears too, and I can hear you yet; And without any feet can go to you; And tongueless, I can conjure you at will. Break off my arms, I shall take hold of you And grasp you with my heart as with a hand; Arrest my heart, my brain will beat as true; And if you set this brain of mine afire, Then on my blood-stream I yet will carry you.

Ma vie n’est pas cette heure abrupte où tu me vois précipité Je suis un arbre devant mon décor, Je ne suis qu’une de mes bouches, celle de toutes qui se clora la première. Je suis l’intervalle entre les deux notes qui ne s’accordent l’une et l’autre qu’à grand’peine, car celle de la mort voudrait monter plus haut… Mais toutes deux, vibrant durant l’obscure pause, se sont réconciliées. Et le chant reste beau.

When Things Close In It feels as though I make my own way through massive rock like a vein of ore alone, encased. I am so deep inside it I can't see the path or any distance: everything is close and everything closing in on me has turned to stone. Since I still don't know enough about pain, this terrible darkness makes me small, If it's you, though— press down hard on me, break in that I may know the weight of your hand and you, the fullness of my cry.

For your sake poets sequester themselves, gather images to churn the mind, journey forth, ripening with metaphor, and all their lives they are so alone... And painters paint their pictures only that the world, so transient as you made it, can be given back to you, to last forever. All becomes eternal. See: In the Mona Lisa some woman has long since ripened like wine, and the enduring feminine is held there through all the ages. Those who create are like you. They long for the eternal. They say, Stone, be forever! And that means: be yours. And lovers also gather your inheritance. They are the poets of one brief hour. They kiss an expressionless mouth into a smile as if creating it anew, more beautiful. Awakening desire, they make a place where pain can enter; that’s how growing happens. They bring suffering along with their laughter, and longings that had slept and now awaken to weep in a stranger’s arms.

THE BOOK OF A MONK’S LIFE I live my life in circles that grow wide And endlessly unroll, I may not reach the last, but on I glide Strong pinioned toward my goal. About the old tower, dark against the sky, The beat of my wings hums, I circle about God, sweep far and high On through milleniums. Am I a bird that skims the clouds along, Or am I a wild storm, or a great song? Many have painted her. But there was one Who drew his radiant colours from the sun. My God is dark- like woven texture flowing, A hundred drinking roots, all intertwined; I only know that from His warmth I'm growing. More I know not: my roots lie hidden deep My branches only are swayed by the wind. Dost thou not see, before thee stands my soul In silence wrapt my Springtime's prayer to pray? But when thy glance rests on me then my whole Being quickens and blooms like trees in May. When thou art dreaming then I am thy Dream, But when thou art awake I am thy Will Potent with splendour, radiant and sublime, Expanding like far space star-lit and still Into the distant mystic realm of Time. I love my life's dark hours In which my senses quicken and grow deep, While, as from faint incense of faded flowers Or letters old, I magically steep Myself in days gone by: again I give Myself unto the past:- again I live. Out of my dark hours wisdom dawns apace, Infinite Life unrolls its boundless space ... Then I am shaken as a sweeping storm Shakes a ripe tree that grows above a grave ' Round whose cold clay the roots twine fast and warm- And Youth's fair visions that glowed bright and brave, Dreams that were closely cherished and for long, Are lost once more in sadness and in song.

To Darkness 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 all the rest. But the dark embraces everything: shapes and shadows, creatures and me, people, nations—just as they are. From The Book of Hours I, 11

Go to the Limits of Your Longing God speaks to each of us as he makes us, then walks with us silently out of the night. These are the words we dimly hear: You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing. Embody me. From The Book of Hours I, 59

How surely gravity’s law, strong as an ocean current, takes hold of even the smallest thing and pulls it toward the heart of the world. Each thing— each stone, blossom, child— is held in place. Only we, in our arrogance, push out beyond what we each belong to for some empty freedom. 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 learn from the things, because they are in God’s heart; they have never left him. The Book of Hours II, 16

i enter the idiot's bookstore. i don't have any money and i don't have a knack for crime either lining up before my eyes wonderful titles moribund from sitting so long on the shelves. steal us, they say, we can't stand it anymore in the idiot's bookstore. who'd believe this version of the facts? help me, maragatos in this most stolen hour of a destitute liberator of books. my heart pounds. pounds more than the salgueiro drum line. my whole body shakes and my hands sweat buckets. i reach the street, hands empty and the books cry: sissy.

Never Yet Spoken I believe in all that has never yet been spoken. I want to free what waits within me so that what no one has dared to wish for may for once spring clear without my contriving. From The Book of Hours I, 12

It’s here in all the pieces of my shame that now I find myself again. From The Book of Hours II, 2

God Speaks I am, you anxious one. Don’t you sense me, ready to break into being at your touch? My murmurings surround you like shadowy wings. Can’t you see me standing before you cloaked in stillness? Hasn’t my longing ripened in you from the beginning as fruit ripens on a branch? I am the dream you are dreaming. When you want to awaken, I am waiting. I grow strong in the beauty you behold. And with the silence of stars I enfold your cities made by time. The Book of Hours I, 19