Rilke & Walcott

I came across this video presentation by David Whyte years ago. It’s very clever and very good, one of the few presentations of poetry that made sense to me. I like the constant repetition he employs. I apologize for the tattered sound track of the video below but with the help of his repetition and the text of the poem here you should be able to make your way though it. 

The poems offer great advice: if not for others than for yourself -- so spread the word. This is the kind of advice that seems to need repeating. I don’t know where you are in your journey (faith or otherwise) but stop for a moment and see whether a correction is not in order. There was a magnificent swan along the river just outside my apartment today, much like the picture above. Gave me a wonderful opportunity for a Tolle meditation seeking quietude and stillness as I recite the Jesus Prayer for a mantra.

The Swan – Rilke Rainer Maria

The labouring through what is still undone,
as though, legs bound, we hobbled along the way,
is like the awkward walking of the swan.

And dying – to let go, no longer feel
the solid ground we stand on every day
is like his anxious letting himself fall
into the water, which receives him gently
and which, as though with reverence and joy,
draws back past him in streams on either side;
while, infinitely silent and aware,
in his full majesty and ever more
indifferent, he condescends to glide.

You are like Rilke's Swan in his awkward waddling across the ground; In water this most graceful of creatures is evolution’s klutz stepchild on land. One leg seems to cross over in front of another rocking the great bird off its balance which he barely manages to salvage with his next step. And on it goes, the creature with its own ballet named after it appearing as a vomit-soaked soldier stumbling toward his bunk.

The swan doesn't cure his awkwardness by beating himself on the back, by moving faster, or by trying to organize himself better. Rilke tells us he does it by moving toward the elemental water where he belongs. It is the simple contact with the water that gives him grace and presence.

But what Rilke is really telling us is that we only have to touch the elemental waters in our own hearts ("Be still and know that I am the Lord Thy God [Psalm 46:10]), and it will transform everything. But you have to let yourself down into those waters from the ground of the mind on which you stand, and that can be hard. Particularly if you think you might drown.

And to die, which is the letting go
Of the ground we stand on and cling to every day

This nervously letting yourself down, this ängst -lichen Sich-Niederlassen, as it says in the German, takes courage, and the word courage in English comes from the old French word cuer, heart. You must do something heartfelt, and you must do it soon.

Let go of all this effort, Rilke says, and let yourself down, however awkwardly, into the waters you seek for yourself, the being you crave to be part of. It's all right, you know, to support yourself with something secondary until your work has ripened, but once it has ripened to a transparent fullness, it has to be gathered in. You have ripened already, and you are waiting to be brought in. Your exhaustion is a form of inner fermentation. Learn to trust the stranger who is yourself and the Christ within you, the one you have never trusted but who has been there all your life: Surrender. Yes, surrender.

Love After Love – Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Adapted from a video presentation by David Whyte.

Article about Rilke here.