Rilke : Duino Elegies, elegy #8

[Dekalb_Blues]

RE: Rilke : Duino Elegies, elegy #8

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Jomo posted:

1. "... Free from death.
We alone see that: the free creature
has its progress always behind it,
and God before it, and when it moves, it moves
in eternity, as streams do."

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Apropos, two poems by Ursula K. Le Guin:


GRACE

The kitten no bigger than a teacup growls
true threat at interference with his food;
will bite the hand that feeds him and draw blood.
He is Tiger Entire in his soul!
He shames the monkeyness in us, that howls
and grins and chatters and, knowing bad from good,
claims to be other than the animals
and nearer than the tiger to the grace of God.


THE BODY OF THE WORLD
[on the train between Seattle and Portland, October 2009]

I am this body and the leaves I see
blown from the brassy cottonwoods
beside the road. The body of the world,
the mountain and the clouds above it, that is me.
I breathe the autumn wind that is my breath
and in my body lives my brother, dead
two days ago. The one thing I am not
and he is not nor can we be is Death.

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2. "... [T]here is a feeling of being gently spoken to, a language buried in that dance of leaves..."

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THOUGHT-BIRD SONG

The birds outside my window
Are your thoughts sent to me
They come flying; fledglings.
I feed them bread crumbs
So they do not go hungry,
Then they perch on the tree branch
With beaks open, singing:
We come from the nest
Of yesterday and tomorrow.
God bless our journey.
We have flown from the inside
To the outside
World of your knowledge.
The cage door is wide open.
We burst out singing.
We fill all the treetops.
Splendid and glowing.
Tiny as tree bells
We dance on the tree branches
Night and day always.
Listen to us. Feed us.
We are your thoughts winging
Out of the nest of the birth-cage
Into summer and winter.
We perch on the branches
Of the minutes and seconds.
Our song is your heartbeat.
We move with your pulses.
You send us out perfect and shining,
Each living and different
To populate your kingdom.
We sing outside your window
And line up on the rooftops.
Separate and knowing
We peer through the branches,
Surveying the inner
Land of enchantment,
The skyless and timeless
World of our birth.
We fly from our perches
Back and forth to our first nest,
Vanishing inside
The cage of your head,
Then we fly out again
And sing at your window
While you feed us bread crumbs
From your hand.

-- Jane Roberts

“In poetry the Sumari songs, sung or written, delineate the metaphysics of the inner self. And that metaphysics is, I believe, truer to reality than the exterior dogmas and sciences that we accept as ‘truth’.”
--- from Roberts' Adventures in Consciousness: An Introduction to Aspect Psychology (NY: Prentice Hall, 1978)

Learn about Sumari art & listen to "The Thought-Bird Song"