KRISTEN SAYS:

Written by Rainer Maria Rilke

Translated by Joanna Macy

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.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

The snails on the pink sleds of their bodies are moving

among the morning glories.

The spider is asleep among the red thumbs

of the raspberries.

What shall I do, what shall I do?

The rain is slow

The little birds are alive in it.

Even the beetles.

The green leaves lap it up.

What shall I do, what shall I do?

The wasp sits on the porch in her paper castle.

The blue heron floats out of the clouds.

The fish leaps, all rainbow and mouth, from the dark water.

This morning the water lilies are no less lovely, I think,

than the lilies of Monet.

And I do not want anymore to be useful, to be docile, to lead

children out of the fields into the text

of civility, to teach them that they are (they are not) better

than the grass.