I'm a recent fan of Rainer Maria Rilke's works.. this one simply blew me away. This guy CAN write realllllly well.
Love Song
How can I keep my soul in me, so that it doesn't touch your soul? How can I raise it high enough, past you, to other things? I would like to shelter it, among remote lost objects, in some dark and silent place that doesn't resonate when your depths resound. Yet everything that touches us, me and you, takes us together like a violin's bow, which draws one voice out of two separate strings. Upon what instrument are we two spanned? And what musician holds us in his hand? Oh sweetest song. Translated by Stephen Mitchell
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"Death" as a topic for a casual conversation wasn't a problem for me.
At least that was before what happened to me almost 7 months ago today
to be exact (Dad died 26th of July 6:45pm).Finding this poem by
Rilke is actually a blessing.. To be able to find another person who is
capable of articulating what I had felt/have been feeling somewhat gives
me a sense of peace that what I'm going through is a shared phenomenon.
That I'm not alone. More importantly, that someone understands.
We lack all knowledge of this parting. Death does not deal with us. We have no reason to show death admiration, love or hate; his mask of feigned tragic lament gives us a false impression. The world's stage is still filled with roles which we play. While we worry that our performances may not please, death also performs, although to no applause. But as you left us, there broke upon this stage a glimpse of reality, shown through the slight opening through which you dissapeared: green, evergreen, bathed in sunlight, actual woods. We keep on playing, still anxious, our difficult roles declaiming, accompanied by matching gestures as required. But your presence so suddenly removed from our midst and from our play, at times overcomes us like a sense of that other reality: yours, that we are so overwhelmed and play our actual lives instead of the performance, forgetting altogether the applause. Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming
----------------------------"I could shed another million tears, a million breaths,
A million names but only one truth to face" - A Thousand Years by Sting
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