“Whoever reaches into a rosebush may seize a handful of flowers; but no matter how many one holds, it's only a small portion of the whole. Nevertheless, a handful is enough to experience the nature of the flowers. Only if we refuse to reach into the bush, because we can't possibly seize all the flowers at once, or if we spread out our handful of roses as if it were the whole of the bush itself -- only then does it bloom apart from us, unknown to us, and we are left alone.” 
― Lou Andreas-Salomé


The Poetry of Rilke, translated and edited by Edward Snow, is one of the books I brought with me in my recent move from Eugene. We have a very tall storage unit in Eugene, where most of my books are currently stored in boxes. 

As I packed those boxes, I considered the endless volumes of poetry, the Jungian psychology, and the hiking and nature books, and left most of them behind. What I brought was anything Asian-influenced, my haiku and haibun books, and a gift, The Penguin Anthology of 20th Century American Poetry.  Another gift, Federico Garcia Lorca, Collected Poems, and The Poetry of Rilke. These two books, because no matter where I travel, I want Lorca and Rilke nearby. They are a particular comfort. 

Rilke, no angel, is my idea of an adult that lived out his spiritual ambiguity with grace. At no point was he wanting to be pious, but in his honest questioning, he tapped into that place of wonder we begin burying as soon as we are embarrassed by our vulnerabilities. I think of it as layering, as intellectualizing, as creating a wall between what our hearts tell us we need and our minds and culture tell us we don't. 

As we become responsible, mature adults, we learn how to fit in, we learn to compromise. And then eventually, if we're very fortunate, we begin to unlearn, to unravel. And maybe by the time we breathe our last breath, we are fully ourselves. Rilke was. Lorca was. Lou Andreas-Salome, Rilke's lover, definitely was.

I carry Rilke's works with me, because so often I choose to turn away, to close myself off. As Andreas-Salome wrote,  . . . "a handful is enough to experience the nature of the flowers." If I can just open the book's cover, skim a few lines, read a few poems, I am gently brought back to myself.  




To Lou Andreas-Salome
-by Rainer Maria Rilke 

I held myself too open, I forgot 
that outside not just things exist and animals 
fully at ease in themselves, whose eyes 
reach from their lives' roundedness no differently 
than portraits do from frames; forgot that I 
with all I did incessantly crammed 
looks into myself; looks, opinion, curiosity. 
Who knows: perhaps eyes form in space 
and look on everywhere. Ah, only plunged toward you 
does my face cease being on display, grows 
into you and twines on darkly, endlessly, 
into your sheltered heart. 

As one puts a handkerchief before pent-in-breath- 
no: as one presses it against a wound 
out of which the whole of life, in a single gush, 
wants to stream, I held you to me: I saw you 
turn red from me. How could anyone express 
what took place between us? We made up for everything 
there was never time for. I matured strangely 
in every impulse of unperformed youth, 
and you, love, had wildest childhood over my heart. 

Memory won't suffice here: from those moments 
there must be layers of pure existence 
on my being's floor, a precipitate 
from that immensely overfilled solution. 

For I don't think back; all that I am 
stirs me because of you. I don't invent you 
at sadly cooled-off places from which 
you've gone away; even your not being there 
is warm with you and more real and more 
than a privation. Longing leads out too often 
into vagueness. Why should I cast myself, when, 
for all I know, your influence falls on me, 
gently, like moonlight on a window seat. 




Translated by A. Poulin