“And God said to me, Write:
Leave the cruelty to kings.
Without that angel barring the way to love
there would be no bridge for me
into time.
And God said to me, Paint:
Time is the canvas
stretched by my pain:
the watchful woman,
the wounds of Christ,
the city’s sad bacchanals,
the names of kings.
And God said to me, Go forth:
For I am the king of time.
But to you I am only the shadowy one
who knows with you your loneliness
and sees through your eyes.
He sees through my eyes
in all the ages.”
Rilke’s Book of Hours, The Book of a Monastic Life












