Thursday, March 1, 2012

only in the spell of your renouncing




What birds fly through is not that intimate space
in which you feel all forms intensified.
(There, in the Open, you’d be denied yourself
and vanish on and on without return.)

Space reaches out from us and translates each thing:
to accomplish a tree’s essence
cast inner space around it, out of that space
that has its life in you.  Surround it with restraint:
in itself it has no bounds.  Only in the spell
of your renouncing does it rise as Tree.

Rainer Maria Rilke
translated by Edward Snow


9 comments:

  1. I would like to think there was only one tree but isn't that the illusion?

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  2. the tree itself seems to be coming into and passing out of existence. it represents us all, our moment. am i inside the tree? am i one of its dreams? this possibility gives me great calm.

    standing and looking up into the forest toward the tops of the trees - how much time passed? - our bodies altered in our staring up - how we forgot, for a moment, to be human - inside of a moment like this there is only tree.

    xo
    erin

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  3. Lovely poetry on your sights. And thought provoking, such as this one. Thanks for stopping by and your kind words. It's been so long since I've updated blogspot, I almost forgot I had one. Ha! ( am found under the same name at most places. (Most regularly anvilsandedelweiss.wordpress.com)

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  4. argh. *sites* lovely poetry on your sites. need coffee!

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  5. Sheesh. This is true.

    Look at that tree. Wow. All the blurring around it....

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  6. yes, this is the mythical tree, the archetype. i think it is one of the most astonishing tree images i have ever seen...

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  7. Liz: surely all trees are versions of the one tree ... this is music, isn't it?


    erin: we faded, didn't we? there was nothing but tree, and we were only the motion of a branch, of two branches, side by side ...


    Leah: thank you, and welcome to the klage-himmel :-)


    Hannah: i was lucky with the blurring ... it is snow on the camera lens ... there was a time when i would have discarded this picture because of that :-)


    Roxana: this is the tree, maybe it is yggdrasil ... then i am silent and abashed ...

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  8. Stunning tree. Jeanette sent me here. I'm pleased to meet you.

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  9. Elisabeth: thank you for coming by. i'm pleased to meet you, too :-)

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