Constantly Greater Beings

  

I don't usually offer context (and god forbid, explanation) for the poems that I share. But Rilke's insight lies behind my post earlier this week, about the need to go down, down, down. We are kidding ourselves, in our collective, hyper-heroic mode, that we are in total control, all pulling our own strings and single handedly orchestrating the future. Kidding ourselves, and also missing an essential experience of humanness, that of making ourselves, and of being made, in a mysterious universe.

                   

                      

                                                    The Man Watching

                                    I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
                                    So many dull days, against my worried windowpanes,
                                    That a storm is coming,
                                    And I can hear the far-off fields say things
                                    I can't bear without friend,
                                    I can't love without a sister.

                                    The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on
                                    Across the woods and across time,
                                    And the world looks as if it had no age;
                                    The landscape, like a line in a psalm book,
                                    Is seriousness and weight and eternity.

                                    What we choose to fight is so tiny!
                                    What fights with us is so great!
                                    If only we would let ourselves be dominated,
                                    As things do by some immense storm,
                                    We would grow strong too, and not need names.

                                    When we win it's with small things,
                                    And the triumph itself makes us small.
                                    What is extraordinary and eternal
                                    Does not want to be bent by us.
                                    I mean the Angel, who appeared
                                    To the wrestlers of the Old Testament;
                                    When the wrestlers' sinews
                                    Grew long like metal strings,
                                    He felt them under his fingers
                                    Like chords of deep music.

                                    Whoever was beaten by this Angel,
                                    (who often simply declined the fight),
                                    Went away proud and strengthened
                                    And great, from that harsh hand
                                    That kneaded him as if to change his shape.
                                    Winning does not tempt that man.
                                    This is how he grows, by
                                    Being defeated, decisively,
                                    By constantly greater beings.

                                    ---Ranier Maria Rilke