Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower

POETRY FORMAT, 30 Jan 2023

Rainer Maria Rilke – TRANSCEND Media Service

Quiet friend who has come so far,

feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.

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René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke, shortened to Rainer Maria Rilke, was an Austrian poet and novelist. He has been acclaimed as an idiosyncratic and expressive poet, and is widely recognized as a significant writer in the German language. Wikipedia


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One Response to “Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower”

  1. Gary S. Corseri says:

    Rilke’s too-short 51 years bridged the last 25 years of the 19th Century and the first 25 of the 20th Century. He was one of the greatest thinkers and writers of both centuries….

    How can we troubled, confused beings model good behavior, high thoughts for others who are also troubled and confused?

    Can we acknowledge the “intensity of pain,” be a “bell tower” for others, “to move back and forth into the change”?

    And, if our fellow humans cannot/will not hear us…let us speak to the “silent earth” and the “rushing water”: our own realized miracles–“I flow… I am….”